From ‘Unilateral’ to ‘Dialogical’: Determinants of EU–Azerbaijan Negotiations

Abstract

The European Union (EU) and Azerbaijan have negotiated three different agreements for a new legal basis underpinning their relationship since 2010. Whereas the EU tries to adhere to a more unilateral approach, Azerbaijan wants cooperation to take place on a more inclusive, dialogical, basis. The essay will present a model of 'bargaining power' to analyse how the Azerbaijani government has tried to enforce this, and to what degree it has been successful. It finds that the bargaining power model can explain some of the changing power dynamics in EU-Azerbaijan relations, and that these might speak to the broader Eurasian region too. RELATIONS BETWEEN AZERBAIJAN AND THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) 1 HAVE BECOME MORE AND MORE INTENSE over the past decades. Cooperation is particularly smooth in the area of energy supply as well as trade. However, The fieldwork for this research was made possible through the generous financial support of the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, BASEES, and UACES. I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their time and effort in reading the first draft of the essay and for making very helpful suggestions. Further gratitude is due to the organisers and participants of the conference 'Beyond Vilnius: The European Union and the Emerging Eurasian Space' at the University of Trento, 29-30 January 2016, for providing such in-depth feedback on the initial version of this essay, to peers at the BASEES Annual Conference 2017, to colleagues at the Global Europe Centre, and especially also the editors, for their very helpful comments on later drafts.

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“…9 Although Azerbaijan became a party to the Eastern Partnership program in 2009, it did not sign the Association Agreement with the EU. Instead, in 2013, it offered a new draft framework to negotiate with the EU during the EaP summit in Vilnius, which was dropped by the EU later (Gils 2018). Since then, the parties have been attempting to find a way to agree to replace the outdated PCA.…”