“Azerbaijan is eyeing up integration processes, but it is fairly self-sufficient”

By Vestnik Kavkaza

After October 3rd, when Serge Sargsyan stated Armenia’s intention to join the Customs Union and take part in establishing the Eurasian Union, experts began to discuss prospects of extending these integration projects again. Azerbaijan is one of the states which could improve the Eurasian project.

The head of the State Duma Committee on CIS affairs, Leonid Slutsky, spoke about his view on Baku’s accession to the new union: “If we compare Azerbaijan with the situation a decade ago, Azerbaijan can be called a prosperous country. Due to oil and gas, Azerbaijan achieves serious successes in the economy, social policy and development, including knowledge-intensive industry and education.”

Slutsky is proud of having many friends both in Azerbaijan and Armenia and thinks that “we shouldn’t leave the bleeding problem of Nagorno-Karabakh to our grandchildren. I am sure that together with the OSCE Minsk Group we will achieve success in this delicate process, and withdrawal of troops from seven occupied regions around Nagorno-Karabakh will be started. At the moment at least several dozen people die on the border annually. The Minsk Group effectively contributes to peace in near-border regions.”

Speaking about Azerbaijan and integration processes, Slutsky stated that Baku is eyeing them up, but in general it is self-sufficient: “The Eastern Partnership and its parliamentary dimension called EuroNest actively worked in Baku. But the authorities of Azerbaijan stated their firm “No!” to Mr. Stefan Fule and EuroNest, which was opened last year by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. Azerbaijan like no other country in the post-Soviet space saw in the Eastern Partnership a mechanism of expansion, a rather aggressive expansion into sovereign affairs connected with defense policy. I don’t think we should talk about a conflict between the Eurasian and European directions of development, but Azerbaijan treats its independence very thoughtfully. If it is beneficial for Azerbaijan to join the Eurasian project from the economic point of view (many experts in Baku and not only in Baku analyze this), I think Azerbaijan will join the Eurasian project. I look at this realistically. We have very close relations with Azerbaijan, very close inter-parliamentary ties. Azerbaijan is one of the countries where the number of Russian schools has not fallen, where the number of Russian universities is growing. Our positions do not always match, but our relations are very warm. And estimates don’t develop on membership of Azerbaijan in GUAM or its non-participation in Eurasian processes. Azerbaijan is a country which is building its future step by step. And at the moment Azerbaijan, its president and its people are managing to do this. As relations between our countries are close, we can correct our positions in any direction of joint development, including economic prosperity which is so important to our countries, I mean joining the Eurasian project.”

“We have spent a lot of time synchronizing our positions with media colleagues on development of the parliamentary future of the Eurasian Union,” Slutsky says. “On March 18, 2014, the Intergovernmental Council of the EurAsEC suggested elimination of the EurAsEC and turning it into the Eurasian Economic Union. It would partially repeat the European experience. We remember that the Treaty of Maastricht established the European Union only as a label, a cover on which since 1993 substantive bricks began to be added, including the European Parliament…

We are constantly talking with our colleagues about the parliamentary dimension of the future Eurasian Union. Earlier this year we founded the forum “Eurasian Economic Prospect” which is involved in development of various dimensions of the Eurasian Union – the economy, a parliament, security, the CSTO and a common information space.”