The European Union on Tuesday again warned Azerbaijan against invading Armenia following Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s latest threats and territorial claims against Armenia, such as Baku’s renewed demands for Yerevan to open an extraterritorial corridor to the Nakhichevan exclave.
“The EU has been using every opportunity to pass clear messages to Azerbaijan that any violation of Armenia’s territorial integrity would be unacceptable and will have severe consequences for our relations,” said Peter Stano, the EU’s Lead Spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy, reports Armenpress.
“We remain firm and steadfast in this stance,” said Stano.
Last week, Aliyev said Azerbaijani people and cargo transported to and from Nakhichevan through Armenia’s Syunik province must be exempted from Armenian border checks.
He also demanded Armenian withdrawal from “eight Azerbaijani villages” and again dismissed Yerevan’s insistence on using the most recent Soviet maps to delimit the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rejected Aliyev’s demands, calling them territorial claims on Armenia. He also accused Baku of undermining prospects for signing a peace treaty strongly supported by the EU and the U.S.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, issued the same warning to Baku in November 2023 as the 27-nation bloc deployed more observers to Armenia’s volatile border with Azerbaijan. The EU launched the monitoring mission in February 2023 with the stated aim of preventing or reducing ceasefire violations there.
EU officials have so far not elaborated on the “severe consequences” for Azerbaijan and have resisted calls to impose sanctions on Baku even after last September’s Azerbaijani military takeover and occupation of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) that forced the over 100,000 entire indigenous population of the region to be displaced to Armenia.
Some analysts linked their stance to a 2022 agreement to significantly increase the EU’s import of Azerbaijani natural gas. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described Azerbaijan as a “key partner in our efforts to move away from Russian fossil fuels” when she signed the deal in Baku.
