Baku responds to German Foreign Minister's criticism

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has criticised Baku's position on climate change financing at COP29 as wrong.

‘As the European Union we face our historical responsibility. But climate finance and CO2 reduction belongs to everyone.  We will not allow the poorest countries to be robbed by new rich issuers with the support of the presidency.’ She wrote this in her 'Platform X' account on Sunday.

Azerbaijan's Presidential Assistant for Foreign Policy Hikmet Hajiyev reacted to the post. In his account, he wrote:'‘COP29 has successfully concluded, leaving its mark in the history of global climate action as the ‘Baku Breakthrough’ with the establishment of a new financial target among other important achievements at the most critical and difficult moments of the negotiations, when the developing world and the Global South were expecting concrete financial commitments from the European Union and the West in general.

It is not acceptable for German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock to make accusations against Azerbaijan as the COP Presidency and other parties to the convention. Unfortunately, Ms Baerbock appears to have conflated the upcoming German elections as domestic politics with extremely complex multilateral diplomacy, probably in an attempt to use COP29 as a platform for her election campaign. She also had to consider that these complex negotiations were taking place in the absence of the German Chancellor and the President of the European Commission, at a time when Europe had failed to demonstrate leadership and the world was deeply polarised geopolitically. However, we recognise the professional contribution and cooperation of the German and European Union climate negotiating teams.

In front of the eyes of the world, Azerbaijan, as host and chair of COP-29, acted as an honest broker to achieve results.’