Operation Althea
military operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Operation Althea, formally the European Union Force Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR), is a military deployment in Bosnia and Herzegovina to oversee the military implementation of the Dayton Agreement. It is the successor to NATO's SFOR and IFOR. The transition from SFOR to EUFOR was largely a change of name and commanders: 80% of the troops remained in place. It replaced SFOR on 2 December 2004.
General aspects
Civilian implementation of the Dayton Agreement is enforced by the Office of the High Representative.
As of January 2026, EUFOR's commander is Major General Maurizio Fronda of Italy. For this mission, the European Union Military Staff is using NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) as the EU's Operational Headquarters (OHQ) and is working through the Vice Chief of Staff (previously Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe), a European officer.
EUFOR assumed all the missions of SFOR, except for the hunt for individuals indicted by the war crimes tribunal, notably Radovan Karadžić, former leader of Republika Srpska, and Ratko Mladić, their former military leader, which remained a mission for NATO through NATO Headquarters Sarajevo. EUFOR does have police duties against organised crime, which is believed to be linked to suspected war criminals. It worked with the European Union Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUPM) and with the Bosnian Police. The European Union Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina provides political guidance on military issues with a local political dimension to the EUFOR.
A total of 25 countries, including EU Member States and non-EU Troop Contributing Countries (TCC) are present within EUFOR. (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey).
“Operation Althea” enters the record as military operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Operation, Althea and military can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q691042. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Operation Althea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.