Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-26-Speech-3-313"
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"en.20051026.21.3-313"2
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".
Madam President, I am obliged to the Commissioner for painting a picture that is very rich in light and shade. We can indeed point to some advances, and they are deserving of mention and praise, but there has, recently, been a great deal of renewed nervousness, resulting in a number of measures that are not really compatible with free elections.
Commissioner, you are quite right in the things you say, and I would like to endorse them. We – by which I mean the Commission and this House – should, together, do everything possible to ensure that, in post-election Azerbaijan, the new parliament can put more important reforms into effect. It is in the interests of that country’s people that we should not stint in our efforts to that end.
It is quite crucial that we should observe elections not only on the day on which people go to the polls – where some of the measures to which you referred could indeed bring improvements – but also in the period leading up to it; we should observe the transparency of the processes, the degree to which access to the media is possible, and what scope there is for the opposition to develop and expand.
Our delegation’s cooperation with the parliament of Azerbaijan gave us the opportunity to discuss a variety of circumstances that gave us a great deal of food for thought. The country’s ambassador had a job to explain why opposition rallies kept on being cancelled or rescheduled or had to be held on the outskirts of Baku, which must surely have hindered the opposition in its attempts to present its programme and candidates during the run-up to the election.
I am, therefore, far from surprised to learn from what you said that a number of intending candidates had changed their minds because they felt that neither the campaign nor the elections were fair.
Azerbaijan will have to accept that it needs to make great advances towards democracy and transparency. There is no doubting that it has a difficult process of transformation ahead of it, but – the smouldering conflict over Nagorno Karabakh notwithstanding – these steps must be taken.
Something that struck us during our visit to Azerbaijan – and it was something of which we had to take note – was that the fact that the country was living in times of great conflict was the standard reason given for the constant obstruction of measures intended to foster modernisation, transparency and democracy. We realise that it is in Azerbaijan’s interest that the conflict should be resolved, and we do of course hope that it can be, but it must not be allowed to prevent the government from modernising and further developing the country’s internal structures.
You mentioned media access; the media have great problems to contend with, not least as regards their own safety. The safety of critically-minded and free-thinking journalists cannot be guaranteed; one who comes to my mind is the late Elmar Huseynov, whose murder has still not yet been satisfactorily investigated. We would of course welcome a much more determined approach to such things on the part of Azerbaijan.
There is something else I should like to mention in this connection. Azerbaijan is now, thanks to the rapid increase in its oil revenues, in a position to raise a great deal more additional funds. We heard it said during the course of our visit that we can no longer, through our European Neighbourhood Policy, exert any real leverage, as the country is no longer dependent on European funds.
It should be obvious to Azerbaijan that its people’s own interests demand that social and economic progress be ensured, and that, if this is to be done, then much more investment will be needed, for which, in turn, more transparency, public access and democracy are prerequisites."@en1
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