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Will the EU stand up to Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians’ rights? [1]

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Date: 2024-02 

The parliamentary resolution passed on 5 October by 491 legislators to nine – but the EU is not required to act on it. Days earlier, Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, the EU’s political executive branch with sanctioning power, had denied that the EU turned a blind eye to hostilities by Baku when signing the July 2022 MoU.

“Azerbaijan is a partner today, yes, it’s a partner. That doesn’t mean the relationship is simple,” he said.

Aliyev visited Nagorno-Karabakh less than two weeks after the parliamentary resolution passed. There, he was filmed by state media walking over the Artsakh flag.

“We have returned to our lands, we have restored our territorial integrity, and at the same time, we have restored our dignity,” he said in the clip, vowing to punish officials from the internationally unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh state, who had been captured by Azerbaijani forces in September.

Tigran Balayan, Armenia’s designate to the EU in Brussels, said: “It’s exactly because of the deals with Azerbaijan that the EU is the best place to exert pressure on Azerbaijan to, first of all, pay the price for cheating, for lying, for not honouring all the commitments and written obligations of the ceasefire agreement and of international humanitarian law.

“Since Azerbaijan has positioned itself as a petrol station, it should be used as a petrol station. But as a petrol station for the needs of the EU and on the principles that the EU will set up.”

But foreign policy and security expert Sossi Tatikyan told openDemocracy that, even if it wanted to, the EU would have struggled to sanction Azerbaijan in the aftermath of the forced displacement of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.

There was no “consensus amongst its 27 member states” to do so, she explained. “One of the reasons was that some of its member states get gas from Azerbaijan.”

Italy, Hungary, Greece and Bulgaria imported gas from the country in 2022.

The European Commission’s lead spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy, Peter Stano, told openDemocracy that “the EU does not compromise on its core principles and values” and that “human rights and the respect of the rule of law remain at the core of the European Union’s relationship with Azerbaijan”.

He added: “The EU believes that respect for basic rights is fundamental for stability and prosperity. For this reason, the EU continues to be engaged in all fora that allow it to raise its concerns with respect to human rights developments in Azerbaijan, including the annual EU-Azerbaijan Human Rights Dialogue.

“The EU continues to closely follow the situation on the ground regarding human rights.”

Right of return?

The EU pledged to give €12m in humanitarian aid to Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh in the aftermath of last year’s mass forced displacement. This money brings the total amount of aid it has given to people affected by the crisis in the territory to €32.9m since the 2020 war.

EU high representative Josep Borrell said the bloc has also “beefed up” its monitoring mission on the Armenian border amid Azerbaijan’s ongoing territorial threats, which it has issued warnings to Azerbaijan over.

Azerbaijani leader Aliyev has demanded Yerevan open the so-called ‘Zangezur corridor’, which runs from Azerbaijan through Armenia to Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan. The autocratic leader has also repeatedly made irredentist claims that present-day Armenia is ‘Western Azerbaijan’.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/eu-armenia-refugee-war-azerbaijan-gas-energy-russia-security-rights/

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