Newly appointed chief of the European Union's office in Sarajevo, Austrian diplomat Johan Sattler, presented his letters of credence on Monday to the Head of Department for Diplomatic Protocol at the Foreign Affairs Ministry Mirsad Basic.

Sattler replaced Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, the Swedish diplomat who served from 2015 to 2019 in Bosnia as the head of the EU Delegation and EU Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He assumed office on September 1.

Throughout the previous experience, Sattler has had a particular focus on the Western Balkans.

In 1996 he joined the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the Human Rights Department. In 1997, he joined the European Community Monitoring Mission, where he was posted to Sarajevo and Tirana. More recently, he was the Head of the Western Balkans Unit within the Directorate for Eastern/South-Eastern Europe at the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He took up ambassadorial duties in Albania in 2016.

He was born in 1969 in Austria. Apart from native German, Ambassador Sattler is fluent in English and Russian, proficient in Bosnia's official languages Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian as well as Albanian.