"Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are all members of the EU's European Neighborhood Policy, a development that Semneby said was deepening their relationship with Brussels and would also entitle them to increased aid. "We're talking about hundreds of millions of euros for each country. The EU will also step up its representation in the countries, which will mean there will be a larger degree of visibility in the South Caucasus," European Union's new special representative for the South Caucasus Peter Semneby stated in an interview with Thomas de Waal, the Caucasus Project Coordinator and Editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

"I will also spend some time trying to explain to the public in the South Caucasus what the EU is about. There is not a whole lot of knowledge to begin with. To the extent that the EU is known, there are still a lot of misunderstandings about what [it] is about."

"I think there is also lack of knowledge in the EU about the south Caucasus and its particular problems and about the importance of this region for the EU, and if possible this is something I would like to engage on."

Asked about the hopes of many people in the region who dream of joining the EU one day, the special representative was careful to reiterate that the European Neighborhood Policy "does not contain a membership perspective".

"It does mean that the countries can achieve a lot of the benefits of EU membership by working on the implementation of the European Neighborhood Policy," he went on.

"There is a problem - and I am the first to admit that - that since the membership perspective is not there as a big carrot at the end, this deprives us of one of the most powerful levers we had in encouraging the countries of Central Europe to carry out painful reforms."