The European Union Monitoring Mission: ¿A tool for recognition of secessionist territories?

Abstract

Since their creation in 2003 by the EU, the development of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) civilian missions has experienced great advances regarding their conception and also their framework of actuation. The recent monitoring mission in Georgia (EUMM), devoted to control the ceasefire agreement between Russia and Georgia after the Russian invasion of South Ossetia, demonstrates the overcoming of the ordinary ways of actuation of ESDP –which only had a surveillance role to that time. EUMM allows us to consider the new tactics undertaken by the secessionist territories (with the support of the major powers) in the instrumentalization of monitoring missions in order to legitimize their declarations of independence. Under international law, is an essential prerequisite to have the consent of the hosting State of a peacekeeping mission in order the mission not to violate the principle of nonintervention. In this sense, the development in Georgia of the OSCE’s mission has cleared the intentions of Russia when conditioning its continuation to the authorization by Abkhazia and Georgia. If this authorization takes place, it would mean the actual recognition of the independence of these territories. This article analyzes the EU monitoring mission in Georgia and considers this case which has effectively blocked the ongoing mission of the OSCE, leading us to question whether this criterion could be invoked to determine the continuity of the EU mission in Georgia, thus legitimizing the aspirations of independence of South Ossetia and Abajsia.