AZERBAIJAN IN NO HURRY TO INTEGRATE WITH EUROPE

A meeting of foreign ministers of the 28 European Union countries and the six countries involved in the "Eastern Partnership" programme [Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine - tr.] was held in Brussels on 22 July. The main topic of discussion was the preparations for the summit planned for 28-29 November 2013 in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

A statement circulated after the meeting by the spokesperson of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, noted that European Union is looking forward to a successful Vilnius summit of the "Eastern Partnership", but that this would largely depend on the partner countries which are obliged to fulfil their obligations. Mrs Ashton herself noted that the partner countries had already made serious progress, but, just as before, they needed to put considerable effort into making the Vilnius summit a milestone in relations between the EU and the partners.

Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov represented Azerbaijan at the Brussels meeting. In his speech he noted that Baku was interested in developing a dialogue with Brussels based on equal rights and strategic co-operation. Mamedyarov stressed the significance of the recently adopted decision on the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) for transporting Azerbaijan's gas to Europe. The minister said that this would help to further consolidate Europe's energy security and promote the development of political and economic ties between the European Union (EU) and Azerbaijan. The minister also expressed the hope that talks on relaxing the visa regulations and on signing the relevant agreements would end successfully at the forthcoming summit in Vilnius. Besides this, he proposed taking effective steps to develop contacts between the EU and Azerbaijan in education. At the same time, Mamedyarov called for efforts to be stepped up within the framework of the "Eastern Partnership" programme to promote gender equality and allow women to play a greater role in society. Azerbaijan's foreign minister considered it necessary to call upon EU representatives to strictly adhere to their commitments regarding support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan. Some local observers who were inclined to draw light-weight conclusions, hastened to accuse the Azeri authorities of trying to shift the burden of a Karabakh settlement onto Brussels' shoulders. But what we are really talking about is specifically the drawing up of agreements to be signed by the European Union and Armenia, which would precisely and unambiguously make no mention of the territory of Nagornyy Karabakh. The Armenians are trying to get ambiguous formulations included in the text of the agreement with the EU or to ensure that this fundamental issue remains a vague one.

One of the reasons why Baku is in no hurry to initial the agreement on association with the European Union is partly because it intends to come to a decision once it has taken into account document to be drawn up and initialled by Yerevan and Brussels during the summit in Vilnius. The text of this agreement is being carefully withheld from the public, by the Armenian government moreover. This is possibly because the Armenian negotiators will not manage to "slip" Nagornyy Karabakh into the agreement neither de juro nor de facto. But Azerbaijan's circumspection and warning issued to the European Union regarding this issue are not out of place.

The criticism that Baku is lagging behind Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and even Armenia in integrating with the EU is unfounded and does not take into account Azerbaijan's specific situation. Relations between Azerbaijan and the EU are developing in many directions, first and foremost in the power-engineering and transport and communications sectors and are unique in their form. The volume of bilateral trade and economic ties between Azerbaijan and the EU, the amount of investments, financial operations are a good deal greater, i.e. more than 10 times those of Armenia, Georgia and Moldova. It is quite understandable that, when contacts are already booming, there is no particular need to speed up the talks on concluding an agreement with the EU on free and all-embracing trade.

It would envisage the liberalisation of tariffs and the abolition of the technical restrictions on the movement of goods and services. Attention should be focussed on the fact that more than 95 per cent of Azerbaijan's exports to Europe consist of energy resources. We have no problem in marketing oil and gas. At the present time, agreements on free and all-embracing trade are unlikely to boost our non-oil exports to Europe to any considerable extent. However, this will force us to abolish the protective barriers in our internal market, including those in such sensitive sectors as agriculture, banking and insurance.

Baku did incidentally find the talks on relaxing the visa regulations with the EU countries just as taxing. Such an agreement envisages a commitment regarding re-admission, i.e consent to paying for the deportation of all individuals, irrespective of their citizenship, who are found remaining illegally on the territory of the EU countries, even if they flew in from Azerbaijan as a transit country. Unlike Armenia and Georgia where the numbers of passengers in transit are very low, citizens from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan fly to Europe via Baku. It would be quite expensive to shoulder the financial burden of their deportation. It is precisely for this reason that all the controversial terms need to be not only discussed in detail with the European Commission, but we also need to train up our own frontier guard service to prevent undesirable individuals from entering Europe via our country.

The significance of the EU association agreement should not be over-exaggerated either. Dozens of countries in the Balkans, North Africa, the Middle East and even Latin America have similar agreements with Brussels. Turkey signed an agreement like that for the first time back in 1963, but, as we can see, it has not managed to become a member of the European family over the past 50 years. So, one should not have any illusions that the signing of an association agreement might be the first step towards joining the EU. Experience shows that this is not the case.

The absence of an association agreement does not create a legal vacuum in Azerbaijan-EU relations. The ties have already been developing successfully for 20 years now. They are being built on the basis of an existing agreement on partnership and co-operation concluded in Luxembourg in 1996, which came into force in 1999; this agreement regulates the protocols signed within the framework of the European and Neighbourhood Policy", the "Eastern Partnership" programme, in which Azerbaijan is involved along with Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Belarus (the participation of the latter has been halted for the moment).

The fact that Georgia, Moldova and Armenia have completed work on the text of the EU association agreement does not by any means signify that these countries are making a leap forward in their development and will begin to overtake Azerbaijan. In an interview with the Russian Regnum news agency, one of the most competent and thoughtful Russian analysts, the editor-in-chief of the magazine "Russia in Global Affairs", Fyodor Lukyanov, stated: "For Armenia the process of European integration does not exist," after adding that the choice of Europe or Eurasia has little to do with reality.

According to the most optimistic calculations by local and European experts, Armenia's economy  will grow by 146m euros per year, or 2.3 per cent of the country's GDP, once the agreement comes into effect; exports are expected to rise to 15.2 per cent and imports to 8.2 per cent. The growth in Georgia's economy is forecast to be 4.3 per cent or 292m euros. As we can see, we are talking about sums of a couple of hundred million euros, and then these forecasts might turn out to be optimistic. By comparison, the growth in Azerbaijan's economy, in exports and currency reserves can be counted not in millions but in many billions of euros. In actual fact, the governments of Moldova, Georgia and Armenia are hastening to sign the agreements with the EU for one purpose only, to receive immediate, additional financial aid, something which Azerbaijan does not really need, unlike them.

From the above-said, it would be a mistake to draw the conclusion that work on the relevant agreements between Azerbaijan and the EU should be regarded as of secondary importance. As a member of the Milli Maclis delegation to the European parliamentary assembly, I am well aware of the importance to our country of integration with Europe and of the lack of any other alternative. Europe is Azerbaijan's main trade and economic partner and accounts for more than half of its trade turnover. Europe is the main foreign investor in Azerbaijan, the source of the latest techniques and technology needed for upgrading the economy and its infrastructure. The latest scientific developments, education and management expertise are also coming to Azerbaijan from Europe.

The model of an "Islamic state and society" proposed by Iran, as well as the abstract model of a Eurasian Union put forward by Russia cannot compare effectively with the highly developed model embodied by Europe. A certain lack of haste, an absence of desire to automatically speed up the process of European association should not signify deviation from the Euro-Atlantic vector. The polls reveal that the choice made by the political leadership in Azerbaijan in favour of this geopolitical orientation, is extensively supported by the public and it looks as it this will be confirmed at the forthcoming summit in Vilnius in the autumn.