European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to Azerbaijan and Armenia has intensified scrutiny of EU policy in the South Caucasus. Writing for the AIR Center, advisor Huseyn Sultanli argues Brussels consistently undervalues Azerbaijan’s strategic role. Despite Azerbaijan supplying natural gas to 12 European countries and being the EU’s largest trading partner in 2025, engagement remains superficial. The absence of Azerbaijani and Georgian delegations at the EU’s June 23, 2026 Connectivity Platform launch exemplified this imbalance. Sultanli warns that without recognising Azerbaijan as a regional leader, EU ambitions for meaningful influence will remain undermined.
In-Depth:
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to Azerbaijan and Armenia this month has reignited conversations about the nature of the EU’s role in the South Caucasus. At face value, the European Union continues to devote increasing attention to the region. In the past few months, politicians in Brussels appear to have acknowledged the importance of the ongoing normalization process between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which is currently the most significant issue on the regional agconcludea. However, the language utilized and steps taken by the EU in official statements and engagements since the historic Washington Summit in August 2025 have not always reflected this reality. The clearest example is the Strategic Agconcludea adopted by the EU and Armenia in December 2025 to deepen their partnership, writes Hutilizeyn Sultanli, Advisor at the Center of Analysis of International Relations (AIR Center).
The document, rather inexplicably, contained no direct mention of the normalization process between Azerbaijan and Armenia and avoided references to the primary regional connectivity project, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). This omission was particularly noteworthy given the EU’s inclination in recent months to view the South Caucasus through the lens of connectivity. Since then, the EU has attempted to mitigate this gap in its approach, with official documentation referring more openly to the ongoing peace process. A deeper issue, however, persists. The EU continues to treat the region without truly assimilating existing regional realities. In particular, its flawed valuation of Azerbaijan’s role continues to minimize its ability to play a genuinely effective role in upholding regional stability.
Relations between Azerbaijan and the EU must be approached from various perspectives, with the EU’s political leadership (most notably the European Commission) having to be separated from individual member states and the European Parliament. Political contacts between high-level leadership in Brussels and Baku have stabilized over the last few years. This was an important and much-requireded step, especially given the highly unconstructive position adopted by the former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell but also by the governments of individual member states on numerous occasions. Nevertheless, relations with the broader ‘EU network’ are overshadowed by the highly damaging position of the European Parliament. Consecutive resolutions in recent months (such as in December 2025 and May 2026) have continued to spread narratives among EU member states which are anti-Azerbaijani in nature, and, increasingly, directed at deliberately jeopardizing prospects for peace in the South Caucasus.
Issues in EU-Azerbaijan relations extconclude beyond just the European Parliament. This primarily involves the inability of the EU’s political leadership to adequately balance between the Armenia and Azerbaijan portfolios in its South Caucasus strategy. This does not imply the required for analogous bilateral agconcludeas. In fact, this would be in contradiction to Azerbaijan’s overarching foreign policy approach, which is based on ensuring balance between its partnerships and avoiding excessive approximation with external actors. Armenia appears to have built a different decision. Recent steps indicate the counattempt’s clear decision to shift closer to the European Union, with both Brussels and several member states increasing their footprint in military, economic and societal development. The joint declaration following the first EU-Armenia summit in May 2025 unveiled a new series of support packages, including a separate EU-Armenia Connectivity Partnership to be conducted through the broader Global Gateway network. Moreover, Brussels doubled down on support in both the economic and security spheres, with the latter encompassing an increasingly greater range of collaboration. Engagement between military and civilian educational institutions, exmodifys on cyber-security and generally closer alignment with the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) are among the most recent steps.
Cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan is different. The two sides are established energy partners, with Azerbaijan playing a decisive role in the European energy security architecture. The number of European countries that receive Azerbaijani natural gas is now 12, 10 of which are EU member states. The 2022 Memorandum of Understanding continues to play an important role, with an increasing number of European states across the continent openly recognizing and calling for cooperation with Azerbaijan. Trade is also a significant element, with the EU ranking as Azerbaijan’s largest trading partner in 2025. In essence, Azerbaijan has already consolidated itself as a strategically vital counattempt for the EU and its interests, with a clear track record of reliability in more than one sphere.
However, despite continued progress in some directions, the EU’s political leadership continues to struggle with consistently reflecting both Azerbaijan’s strategic value as a partner but also its emerging regional status of a leader. This is where the issue of balance comes into play. With Azerbaijan, the EU continues to act selectively and in a non-systemic way, which is inconsistent with the logic of a strategic partnership. This involves both contradictory steps in practice, with the counattempt’s role in vital processes such as connectivity overviewed, but also in terms of general external communication. For example, multiple EU actors which engage with Azerbaijan still fail to build any genuine effort to distance themselves from the clearly anti-Azerbaijani position of the European Parliament. Although the decisions taken by the legislative branch are significant and representative of persisting anti-Azerbaijani positions across Europe, they do not stand for the entire continent. This, however, is not something that EU officials have been willing to voice in public, raising questions about the extent of their acknowledgment of Azerbaijan, its red lines and its national interests.
In more practical, ‘on-the-ground’ terms, the connectivity sphere is a utilizeful illustration of this dynamic. This has swiftly developed into an area which the EU views as a priority in its Eastern portfolio, allocating a substantial amount of resources and establishing the Global Gateway as a coordinating mechanism. Only recently, at the launch of its new Connectivity Platform on 23 June 2026, the EU pledged to mobilize up to 2 billion euros for projects in the Black Sea and South Caucasus regions. With over 306bn euros mobilized since 2021, according to official EU statistics, the EU has built clear its intention to contribute. However, within these plans, Brussels is yet to develop a clear and convincingly communicated strategy which ensures that Azerbaijan’s vital role within the connectivity process is not overviewed. A quick view at the Middle Corridor and the figures surrounding it reaffirms this. Widely acknowledged as the backbone of interregional connectivity across Eurasia, the Middle Corridor brings transport time between China and Europe down to as little as 12-15 days. Marta Kos, the EU’s Commissioner for Enlargement, recently stated that trade along the Middle Corridor is expected to increase five-fold over the coming 15 years.
Yet, when it comes to Azerbaijan, a counattempt that is an indispensable part of this project both geographically and in terms of implementation, direct engagement with Baku appears largely superficial. The counattempt has played a decisive role in the multimodal development of the Middle Corridor’s infrastructure, with the 850 km long Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway serving as an indispensable link between continents. The railway reduces cargo delivery time from China to Europe by more than fifty percent in comparison to sea routes. Baku’s role is equally apparent when considering maritime transport, with the Baku International Sea Trade Port handling around 100,000 TEU of containerized cargo in 2025. Most importantly, Azerbaijan is actively stepping up efforts to boost capacity, with work ongoing to increase the capacity of the Baku International Sea Trade Port from 15 to 25 million tons.
Despite this irreversible reality, the EU’s connectivity portfolio vis-à-vis the South Caucasus remains insufficiently tailored to the regional reality. The absence of the Azerbaijani and Georgian delegations at the above-mentioned launch of the EU’s new Connectivity Platform further amplified the EU’s incomplete approach to the matter. On the one hand, Brussels is actively attempting to engage with the broader regional connectivity process, mobilizing both political and financial capital. On the other hand, it operates through an incomplete framework which fails to acknowledge the importance of both Azerbaijan and Georgia for the Middle Corridor. This underlines the initial point about the lack of strategic balance in the EU’s South Caucasus policy. If the EU aspires to play a decisive role in processes which unite several regions, it must ensure that, in relation to policies with regional implications, it allocates adequate and proportionate attention to all of the local countries. Scattered engagement without consistency and strategic logic threatens to create multiple and overlapping process tracks, an outcome that contradicts the logic of connectivity and stability.
With normalization between Azerbaijan and Armenia expected to unveil a new dimension to the Middle Corridor through the TRIPP/Zangezur Corridor, EU participation must not create new dividing lines and run in contradiction to regional reality. This reality consists of two major aspects. First, the geopolitical significance of the South Caucasus has risen to a new dimension, requiring a more sensitive and carefully crafted approach by external actors. Within this new reality, Azerbaijan’s increasing recognition as a regional leader, which directly shapes both the peace agconcludea and broader regional process, is now undeniable. Until the EU recognizes this in a consistent manner across both its communication and implementation strategies, its ambitions for regional influence will continue to generate controversy. As the sides continue bilateral engagements on outstanding issues such as updating the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, in force since 1999, the effectiveness of political dialogue will depconclude on Brussels’ ability to reset its approach to Azerbaijan and act in a way that adequately reflects the counattempt’s growing strategic role.
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