Faced with the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, the European Union could “use gas as leverage to put pressure on Azerbaijan,” a researcher from the Free University of Brussels suggests on franceinfo.
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Requested on Friday September 29 by the European Union, a UN mission is expected this weekend in Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory which is the subject of negotiations between the United Nations and Azerbaijan, a week after the start of the flight of the populations of this Armenian enclave, taken over by Baku. In this context, the European Union could use gas to weigh the balance in favor of Armenia. This is Anita’s opinion. Khachaturovaresearcher at Cevipol of the Free University of Brussels.
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The European Union, which obtains its gas from Azerbaijan to no longer depend on Russia, has the means to negotiate with Baku, believes this Nagorno-Karabakh specialist. Even if the gas Azerbaijan represents “a very small percentage of the needs of the European Union” in this matter, the Twenty-Seven have “levers of pressure, because Azerbaijan’s economy depends heavily on its hydrocarbon trade with the European Union” says Anita Khachaturova.
The diplomatic failure of the European Union
For the researcher, the drama experienced by Armenia and the inhabitants of the enclave is the consequence of a “failure of European diplomacy” facing Baku: “The European Union has, since the second Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, attempted to negotiate a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It has been so obsessed with the peace treaty itself that it has emptied the very concept of peace of its substance, in the sense that Azerbaijan has only violated all the red lines each time, without ever this has no consequences“.
Worse, according to Anita Khachaturova, “the question of sanctions was not even addressed at the level of the European Union, even though Azerbaijan organized a blockade in Nagorno-Karabakh, while Azerbaijan violated each time the ceasefire which had been established in the region. And to add that “the European Union, finally, with this gas contract, made it possible to finance the military economy of Azerbaijan“.