EUMM Mandate Extended for Two Years

The European Union extended on Monday the mandate of its monitoring mission in Georgia, deployed after the August 2008 war, for two years until December 14, 2018.

EUMM has a budget of EUR 18 million available for the first year of its renewed mandate.

The mission, which is led by Lithuanian diplomat, Kęstutis Jankauskas, has around 200 unarmed monitors in Georgia, who monitor the compliance with the August, 2008 ceasefire agreement. EUMM observers, however, are not able to carry out monitoring in breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

„Although the situation in the country is relatively stable, EUMM’s contribution remains key,” the EUMM said in a press release on December 12. “EUMM has successfully launched a number of small confidence building projects under its new facility and will increase those. It has also seen an important positive development with the resumption of the incident prevention and response mechanism in Gali.”

“The European Union continues to fully support Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders. The EU actively supports conflict resolution efforts through the work of EUMM but also the EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus (EUSR) and his co-chairmanship of the Geneva International Discussions to which EUMM participates,” it said.