Long Way to the Goal

On 6 February the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev will leave for Brussels to discuss a new draft agreement on strategic partnership. This visit can be called a long way to the goal, which in Azerbaijan and Europe seen in different ways.

Official Baku sees the aim of the Azerbaijan-EU relations in the deepening cooperation in the conclusion of Azerbaijani energy resources and other goods to the European markets, the expansion of contacts between people, access to cheap European financial instruments. These wishes are reflected in the old concept of "deferred democracy" by the Head of Presidential Administration Ramiz Mehdiyev, which in the last two years' re-qualified into course of modernization. "That is, the regime offers a gradual transformation of authoritarianism to democracy in the long term, and above all in the economic sphere.

The European Union sees the Goal in the rapid establishment of democratic traditions in Azerbaijan in the form of free elections, separation of powers, rule of law, respect for human rights and freedoms. This concept of the vision of the Goal was announced during the visit of the vice-president of the European Commission Federica Mogherini in February 2016 in Baku, who said that the EU believes that the path to long-term development and prosperity is through an open society and respect for freedoms.

Taking into account the two entirely different approaches to the same goal, we can come to a cautious conclusion (counter productive actions of the Azerbaijani authorities do not leave anything else) that the truth about the project of strategic partnership, which will be submitted to Aliyev, is somewhere in between.

It will be based on proposals on cooperation between the EU and "Eastern Partnership" program countries (EaP), which is reflected in the Riga Summit Declaration of the Eastern Partnership on May 22, 2015. They included four components: 1. Strengthening institutions and effective management;2. Mobility and human contacts 3.Market opportunities 4.Mutual relations .

Taking into account the weakness of the regime, due to economic collapse and consistent pressure from the West, they can be supplemented by components such as the rule of law, expanding civil society freedoms, human rights and freedom of speech.

Relations between the EU and Azerbaijan since the signing of the first cooperation agreement in 1996 were tense, especially since Ilham Aliyev in power , who strongly hindered the country's integration into the European political and economic space, except for the energy sphere. This is evidenced by outsider position of Azerbaijan in the lineup of participants and countries of the EaP and Aliyev's rhetoric, who often speak about Western civilization, values ​​and realities with irritation.

Azerbaijan has always managed to postpone the signing the agreement with the EU first of associate membership, then the modernization, and finally the partnership, most of all juggling this protracted strategy subjects the country's role in ensuring energy security of Europe and the so-called Kremlin pressure, disinterested in the expansion of the EU's influence in the former Soviet Union .

Today, both of these questions are not so relevant. Firstly, the energy diversification of the European part of the route has been executed, and is in the stage of completion and development, and Azerbaijan"s place in this has fixed by obligations. Secondly, Russia stung by the crisis offers its own modernization plan with the participation of Western institutions that implicitly says about its own process of European integration. Both cards fall from the deck of counter-arguments of Aliyev on the need of the delayed integration with the EU, but he still has 34 cards from the classic "Swiss deck."