21 January 2021—The Head of the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM), Ambassador Marek Szczygieł, participated in a virtual meeting today with the newly appointed Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus, Ambassador Annika Söder.
The Head of Mission congratulated Ambassador Söder on her appointment and expressed his readiness to continue the existing excellent cooperation between the EUMM and OSCE, especially as co-facilitators of the Ergneti Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM).
The critical importance of the Ergneti IPRM in facilitating dialogue between the participants was strongly underlined, and both co-facilitators agreed to work together to convene the 98th Ergneti IPRM round. The previous Ergneti IPRM meeting was held on 24 September 2020.
The Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism seeks to improve security on the ground, to build confidence among the participants, and to find concrete solutions to issues and challenges that conflict-affected populations face in their daily lives.
Further, conflict resolution efforts in the OSCE region, including in the South Caucasus, were stressed as a high priority by the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden Ann Linde, on 14 January in her address to the OSCE Permanent Council.