THE EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICY AND AZERBAIJAN

Written by: Leila Alieva ( Leila Alieva is currently an academic visitor and a fellow of CARA/SRF at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and a research associate at Russia and Eurasia Center at Uppsala University. She is a founder and a head of the Center for National and International Studies (2004), based in Baku, which covers issues of domestic and foreign policy, energy security, conflicts, and security sector reform.

The views expressed in this document are solely those of the author and may not necessarily represent AALEP's position.

"Azerbaijan has implemented few of its Action Plan’s reforms since signing it in 2006 and shows little enthusiasm for further reform and integration. This is due to domestic developments, but also reflects the fact that the EU’s policies are often mismatched to Azerbaijan’s political and economic structure and the country’s priorities. From the beginning, Azerbaijan’s Action Plan prioritized the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and would not have included any European aspirations without pressure from a civil society campaign in 2006. Azerbaijan has since dropped any membership aspirations.

The EU’s only security contribution to Azerbaijan was to appoint a special representative on the South Caucasus, confirming the EU’s support to the OSCE’s Minsk process. Meanwhile, since 2006, Azerbaijan’s oil revenues have increased from a little over €1 billion to € 19 billion, which weakened the potency of the EU’s “More for More” mechanism as a means of encouraging reforms. It also decreased the country’s integrationist trend, instead feeding the rise of “resource nationalism.” Azerbaijan’s importance within the Southern Corridor also rose, as it plays a leading role in supplying EU markets with gas, particularly in the context of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. As the EU’s policy agenda has become increasingly driven by its energy needs, its influence on Azerbaijan’s reform process has diminished. Europe offered little opposition to a massive crackdown on civil society in 2014, which closed many NGOs focused on human rights, research, and journalism and blocked civil society organizations’ access to Western grant money.

An appropriate EU response must support Azerbaijani society’s reformist ambitions while negotiating with the country’s oppressive regime. The EU must reiterate that membership is open to any EaP state, regardless of the religious or ethnic identity of its population.

A strategic approach to managing the situation in Azerbaijan should consider that the obstacles to democracy in the case of Azerbaijan are mainly structural rather than cultural or societal. The oil-rich economy affects the policy choices of the current elite and enables certain regimes — well described in the literature on the political economy of oil, which uses terms such as “resource curse” and “resource nationalism.” The EU should strengthen cooperation with non-state actors as a means of working around these obstacles rather than settling for watered-down reforms.

The indifference and unbalanced approach to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem is another deficiency in the EU’s relations with Baku. Europe’s level of support for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan has never reached that for Georgia or Ukraine.

What is more, the EU should acknowledge that its energy policies have weakened its ability to promote and assess democratization in oil-rich countries like Azerbaijan. Because of its energy interests, the EU did not apply the conditionality principle in its relations with Azerbaijan and instead agreed to negotiate a new Strategic Modernization Cooperation agreement to conduct Eurovision and the European Games. The EU should become more transparent in negotiations and more consistently apply other reform provisions, such as raising the legal status of civil society and sanctioning the bureaucrats responsible for the crackdown on civil society, demanding that the government release political prisoners and provide for basic freedoms.

In countries with entrenched leadership, like Azerbaijan, the needs of the country result from two contradictory sets of needs — those of ruling elites and those of society. Society, which feels itself European and aspires to integration in the EU, needs the process of integration as an important channel of support for democratic changes in the country. The ruling elite, on the other hand, does not have an incentive to change the political status quo. This means that the EU and their delegations should actively seek partnerships with non-state actors, as well as involve them in negotiations on any agreements and monitoring and reporting on the progress of the implementation of the agreements. At the same time, there is a unified national agenda and needs that sometimes are not addressed in bilateral relations (like the primary security issue for the Azerbaijan-Nagorno-Karabakh conflict).

The Azerbaijani public is suffocating under economic monopolies and a lack of opportunities. In spite of frequent inconsistency, it still expects the EU, as a union of established democracies, to promote human rights, freedoms, and democracy.

Besides contributions on these issues, and in order to raise their visibility in the short term, the EU should share its human-centered services and technologies, such as disabled-friendly transportation, environmentally clean and safe construction methods, etc.

The EU should make statements regarding Azerbaijan’s national priority issues in the area of security and democracy, which would strengthen its benchmarks based on common values in relations with Azerbaijan. The Nagorno-Karabakh issue must be approached as a security priority; the EU should adopt a more active, non-partisan stance since four UN resolutions have urged Armenia to withdraw troops from the occupied territories. A greater consistency within EU institutions should be achieved — so that EP resolutions are not only on paper. The EU should not shy away from any leverage it has, including sanctions, if a country in the neighborhood violates human rights and basic freedoms. This will give important moral support to the societies and democratic pro-European constituencies who are struggling for shared values in semi-authoritarian and authoritarian partner states."