International Eurasian Press Fund (IEPF) held a press conference with Conflictologist Avaz Hasanov on 29th April 2019.
According to him, Azerbaijan needs the EU support on two different levels. The first one is the economics which constitutes big importance to Azerbaijan. The most of investors on Azerbaijan are the EU member countries. There are many products being exported from the EU to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan covers 5% of the total EU oil demand. Furthermore, the EU gave financial supports to many projects for refugees and infrastructure after 1993
Another reason for the support of the EU is related to the political dimension. Azerbaijan learns the best practices from the EU not from the East. The experiences of good governance and democracy set an example for Azerbaijan to innovate its administrative bodies. The EU made declarations on protecting the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan against Armenia as well. Another point is Azerbaijan needs the EU “to preserve the balance”. It protects Azerbaijan from external pressure coming from countries such as Russia and Iran.
Azerbaijan and the EU started to have a strained relations when the EU made biased statements towards Azerbaijan about human right issues in September 2015. And discussions were ceased until 2017. Although it was a risky business for us, the relationship begun normalize again after 2017.
Avaz Hasanov also explained reasons of the slowdown of negotiations between Azerbaijan and the EU. He touched on two main issues related delay in talks. According to him two different reasons can be pointed out about this matter. Firstly, Azerbaijan is not a member of the WTO. That is why they cannot expand economic relations with Azerbaijan.
"Although there is an existed oil trade with the EU, further trade expansion seems unlikely. However, the EU puts effort for making Azerbaijan as a member of the WTO. But being a member of the WTO is difficult because there is a strong economic monopoly market structure in Azerbaijan. The quality of products is not good and there are plenty of companies in the market that do not give guarantee for their products," the expert said.
The latter is about the procedure. The EU has its own way of processing documents into the legal entity. Azerbaijan cannot make an agreement be accepted as it wants. There are 28 member countries and documents must be ratified by executives and legislatures by each member state. That is to say agreement must be “filtered” before being signed.
What is the use of the upcoming agreement with EU for Azerbaijan? There might be an easing visa regime. Economic and political reforms will come along with the agreement. The agreement possibly will be signed until the first half of 2019 as he said.
Islam Mammadov