European Community Monitoring Mission - European Union Monitoring Mission (ECMM - EUMM)
- Duration
- 15 July 1991 - 24 August 2007
- Military personnel
- 518
- Fatalities
- none
- Decorations
- none
Since it was founded in 1945, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been made up of 6 constituent republics. The emancipation of the republic and provinces was stated specifically in the constitution of 1974. The economic collapse and the upsurge of Serb nationalism in the 1980s produced a fatal mixture, which was to herald the end of the federation.
Serbian identity
As the strongest nation, the Serbs were in favour of maintaining a powerful unified Yugoslav state to guarantee that they would retain their political power and cultural identity. The Serbs also feared for the rights of their fellow Serbs in the other republics. The Serb president Slobodan fanned the flames of the nationalistic fire by calling for a Greater Serbia and appointing himself as the protector of all Serbs in Yugoslavia.
Independence
On 25 June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence. The JNA intervened almost immediately. The European Community (EC) feared that the conflict would spill over to other parts of the region and that there would be large movements of refugees towards western Europe.
A ‘troika’ of EC countries – Luxembourg, the Netherlands (EC president) and Portugal - managed to persuade Slovenia and the federal government to sign the Brioni Accord on 7 July. An EC observer commission, the European Community Monitoring Mission (ECMM), was to oversee the observance of the ceasefire and the withdrawal of the JNA from Slovenia.
Extension of area of operations
At the end of July the area of operations of the ECMM was extended to include Croatia. The ECMM based its headquarters in Zagreb and a regional control centre (RCC) in Ljubljana. At the end of 1992 and beginning of 1993, the ECMM was expanded with RCCs in Albania, Bulgaria and Hungary. After a while, smaller control centres (CCs) were placed under a number of RCCs. The ECMM headquarters moved from Zagreb to Sarajevo in 1997.