Sokhumi on Possible Scrapping of EU’s South Caucasus Envoy

Scrapping EU special representative’s post for South Caucasus is fraught with reducing Sokhumi’s contacts with Brussels, Sergey Shamba, the breakaway region’s PM said on June 24.

The proposal to abolish number of EU special representative posts, including one for South Caucasus, currently held by Swedish diplomat Peter Semneby, emerged last month; discussions within EU are still ongoing about the bloc’s future diplomatic representation structure.

In the condition of Sokhumi’s reluctance to have contacts with diplomats accredited in Tbilisi, the post of EU’s special representative for South Caucasus has "an intermediary capabilities", which is used by the Abkhaz side to keep contacts with the EU, Shamba said.

"If it is abolished and if we are offered to have contacts with Tbilisi-based [EU] delegation, we will respond with rejection. We have stated for number of times about our rejection to cooperate with diplomatic representations accredited in Tbilisi," Shamba said. "In the condition of not having EU representation in Abkhazia, we can have contacts either directly with Brussels, or with EU’s regional representation in the South Caucasus, but not with the Tbilisi-based representation."

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