By Nicola Smith - 14th December 2003
The EU on Monday will launch a police mission in Macedonia to help the country fight the rise in organised crime.
But the 200-strong mission will allow the Macedonian police to take the lead in tackling criminal gangs, insisted its Belgian leader Chief Commissioner Bart d’Hooge.
He stressed that its remit was to “monitor, mentor and advise” and that the force would not directly confront criminal rings or any resurgence in ethnic violence.
Dubbed “Proxima” the police mission will take over from the eight month old EU military peace-keeping operation that was deployed to prevent bubbling ethnic violence from erupting into civil war.
Alexis Brouhns, the EU’s special envoy to Macedonia, told reporters the country had reached the point that “it can say goodbye to any international military presence for the first time since its independence.”
Although 30 of the police officers will be armed, Brouhns said there was no expectation that ethnic tension would flare up again.
However, EU officials concede that the high rate of violent organised crime and the influence of criminal gangs could pose a threat to the country’s stability.
“The problem is less and less armed conflict and more and more organised crime,” said Brouhns, later adding, “there is a new category of problems linked with criminal groups.”
The military operation to Macedonia which ends on Monday was the first ever EU mission of its type, taking over the reigns from NATO in March this year.
International peace-keeping efforts were stepped up in 2001, when ethnic tension took the country to the brink of civil war.
Admiral Rainer Feist, the highest ranking European officer at NATO’s military headquarters, hailed the mission as an “excellent” example of EU cooperation with the Atlantic Alliance.
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