EU approves extension of Armenia monitoring mission until 2027

EU approves extension of Armenia monitoring missio 679b8f7ccc51f

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On Thursday, the European Council adopted a decision extending the mandate of the EU Mission in Armenia (EUMA) until February 2027.

The council stated that the mission would be allocated over €44 million ($46 million) for the period from 20 February 2025 until 19 February 2027.

They noted that the observers and civilian experts come from 25 EU member states, as well as Canada, a contributing non-EU member.

On Wednesday evening, RFE/RL cited their Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak as saying that EU ambassadors had approved the extension of the mission’s mandate without changing its size.

The mission is currently manned by 165 international observers and analysts in addition to 44 Armenian staffers.

The mission, deployed in January 2023 following Azerbaijani incursions into Armenia in 2022 and 2021, has proved to be a major sticking point in the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, with Baku repeatedly demanding its withdrawal. More recently, Armenia has offered to withdraw the mission from sections of the border with Azerbaijan that have already been delimited.

While 138 observers were initially deployed, the mission announced in late 2023 that those numbers would increase to 209. The EU initially deployed a two-month monitoring mission along the Armenia–Azerbaijan border following the September 2022 war between the two countries.

The EUMA operates exclusively on the Armenian side of the border, with its unarmed civilian observers conducting patrols along the entire border with Azerbaijan, including its exclave of Nakhchivan, and sending classified reports to the EU.

It seldom makes public statements about the border when ceasefire violations are reported.

EU monitors refute Azerbaijani claim of ceasefire violation on Armenia border

The statement came after Azerbaijan accused Armenia of violating the ceasefire.

OC MediaArshaluys Barseghyan

Armenian officials constantly value the role that the EUMA plays in the stability of the region.

One of the recent such sort of statements came in early January, when Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan stated that Armenia would continue to need the EU Mission as long as Azerbaijan continued to accuse Armenia of violating the ceasefire.

Russia and Azerbaijan have criticised the mission since its deployment, accusing it of collecting intelligence against Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran, and calling the civilian mission a ‘paramilitary’ deployment or ‘a military presence’. The EU Mission has also been accused of being co-opted by NATO.

The similarities between official narratives coming out of Azerbaijan and Russia were noted in an open-source investigation published by the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab.

Azerbaijan has been openly calling for the withdrawal of the mission since September 2024, with several high-ranking officials, including President Ilham Aliyev, regularly criticising the mission’s presence on the Armenian border.

In an interview with local Azerbaijani media in early January, Aliyev appeared to threaten the mission, in addition to his usual mockery of the monitors.

‘I don’t want to show them how quickly they might run if someone even accidentally sneezes on Azerbaijani territory, but we’re tempted. This is why we told them to stop these binocular theatrics, and it seems they have’, he said of the EU Mission.

Azerbaijan calls for ‘restrictions’ on Armenian army and withdrawal of EU Mission

Azerbaijan has demanded the withdrawal of the EU Monitoring Mission in Armenia and for ‘restrictions’ to be placed on the Armenian armed forces. On Saturday, Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev told Politico that a new agreement on their joint border commission ’should be seen as sufficie…

OC MediaArshaluys Barseghyan