EU deploys Armenia-Azerbaijan border-monitoring mission, but questions remain Analysis by Euractiv

Euractiv has published an article about the EU mission on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and possible outcomes of European monitoring of the frontier between the two South Caucasus states.

Caliber.Az reprints the article:

EU foreign ministers on October 17 agreed to send a short-term observation mission to work alongside the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, but questions remain over its final objectives and long-term planning.

The decision comes after deadly clashes in September raised fears of a fresh all-out conflict in the region, which led to high-level four-way mediation talks in Prague earlier this month.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have already fought two wars over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 and in the 1990s. The last clash however was at the Armenia-Azerbaijan border proper.

The mission was agreed upon between French President Emmanuel Macron and European Council President Charles Michel, with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

It follows a formal request made by Armenia’s foreign minister Ararat Mirzoyan to EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell in September.

The team will consist of “up to 40 EU monitoring experts along the Armenian side of the international border with Azerbaijan,” the European Council said in a statement.

It will have “the objective of monitoring, analysing and reporting on the situation in the region” and would “in principle” last no more than two months, it said.

An advance team had already arrived in Yerevan on October 14 to assess needs and location and negotiate the framework with the Armenian side, with EU officials saying the signing off of the mission was expected to be a formality.

The observers will be seconded from the EU’s monitoring mission in Georgia (EUMM Georgia), which according to EU officials, is a deliberate choice since they already have experience with the Caucasus region, border assignments and meet language requirements.

This decision comes due to a matter of speed since establishing a new CSDP mission would have taken too much time, EU officials familiar with the matter said.

But while the timeframe for deployment has been set at an initial two months, EU officials believe a more permanent solution, like a dedicated EUMM Armenia, will be needed in the long term.

Some EU member states have also expressed concerns that this would raise the need to staff up the EU’s Georgia mission, for which a corresponding call has been published this week.

A new round of mediation talks between the two conflict parties on the delimitation of borders is likely to be held in Brussels soon, which would constitute the third attempt since May.

“The situation remains very dangerous, the instability is high, and the resentment after 30 years of conflict is great,” Toivo Klaar, the EU Special Representative (EUSR) for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, told a European Parliament committee last week.

“There are not many international players other than us, which is why we must be even more involved,” he added.

“What happened on February 24 had translated into a huge lack of trust from countries that before were in a, whatever you want to call it, special relationship with Russia,” a senior EU official said before the agreement was reached.

“The [conflict] parties are now looking to us; the parties are increasingly feeling that we can better meet the situation that Russia can no longer,” he added.

“The fact is now they think that we can be first, an honest broker, and second we promise things for the future that Russia cannot promise – we promise to get closer to the European Union,” the senior EU official added.

Facing an energy crunch and weaning itself off Russian fossil fuels because of the war in Ukraine, the EU has turned to alternative gas suppliers, including Azerbaijan.

Yet Macron ruffled Baku’s feathers last week when he said a new ”we will not abandon Armenians” while “Azerbaijan has launched several offensives along the border”.

Russia, which has criticised Macron for his remarks, maintains around 2,000 soldiers in Armenia.