The European Parliament is unaware of its own decision?

Anar Mamedli, the head   of the Election Monitoring and Democratic Studies Center (EMDS)  doubts the information on exclusion of Azerbaijan from the list of countries that need  monitoring the elections by the  European Parliament. In an interview with Turan, he noted that  there is a department in the structure of the EU that makes decisions about the long-term monitoring of elections like the ODIHR/OSCE. However, this is  applied to countries that are not members of the OSCE.

At the same time, there is a practice that the European Parliament with a small number of representatives  is involved in the short-term  monitoring  in the missions  of the OSCE/ODIHR.

Until now, the European Parliament in this form  monitored the elections in Azerbaijan and expressed his opinion in a joint final statement from the OSCE ODIHR, PACE,  PA OSCE.

Invitations ODIHR/OSCE are usually dispatched within  six months before the election, and this structure invites  others to monitoring. 

The Azerbaijani government has not sent an invitation to the OSCE ODIHR for the presidential election. Perhaps under such circumstances, the European Parliament decided simply to refuse to participate in the monitoring, or send a very small number of observers.

"However, it can not be represented as an exception of Azerbaijan from the list of countries to be monitored in view of democratic progress achieved. On the other hand, not sending observers of the European Parliament to Azerbaijan, means the loss of confidence in the possibility of conducting democratic elections. This will have a negative impact on the image of the country," said Mamedli. 

To the request of Turan in the European Parliament with a request to comment on the decision on the exclusion Azerbaijan from the list of countries requiring monitoring of the EP, the press service of the body said they did not have information about such a decision.

There is no information about such a decision even on the website of European Parliament. The source of this information was made by one of the deputies of the Milli Majlis, who did not indicate the source.

It is noteworthy that only a month ago the Milli Majlis adopted an angry statement against the European Parliament, accusing it of bias due to the adopted resolution requiring the liberation of the leader  of the  Real Movement, Ilgar Mamedov.—06B-