President of the European Council Charles Michel

At the initiative of the European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy, 91 organizations operating within EU member-states sent a letter to the President of the European Council Charles Michel, expressing profound discontent with his statement of May 23, following the trilateral meeting with the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.  

The organizations welcomed Michel’s efforts for peace negotiations. Nevertheless, they emphasized the importance of ensuring that peace is negotiated based on justice and not by sacrificing the fundamental rights and needs of the Armenian side which was a victim of vicious aggression of the Turkish-Azerbaijani axis in 2020.  

The organizations voiced their regret that Michel’s press statement on May 23 disregards key principles of EU’s documented approach toward the resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and, overall, endorses the Azerbaijani stance on the conflict resolution in some crucial aspects. This includes using the word “Karabakh” while referring to the conflict, instead of “Nagorno Karabakh” which is a political entity with a defined territory. The letter further elaborated that using the term Karabakh by the Azerbaijani authorities is a part of Baku’s ongoing state policy of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh.

Referring to the statement by Charles’ spokesperson May 31, the organizations expressed their appreciation that it introduced important clarifications and emphasized key principles. The organizations expressed hope that EU’s future mediation on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict does justice to negotiating an equitable and lasting peace.

For this purpose the signatories to the letter called on Michel to base the mediation on the following six concrete aspects:

• The Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement between the EU and Armenia (CEPA), which entered into force in March 2021, “recognizes the need to achieve that settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict on the basis of the purposes and principles enshrined in the UN Charter and the OSCE Helsinki Final Act, including the equal rights and self-determination of peoples, as one of the three Basic principles.”
• Any direct control of Baku over the Nagorno Karabakh inevitably means ethnic cleansing of its millennia-old native Armenian population. Hence the question of the status of Nagorno Karabakh which must reflects the democratic _expression_ of will of the Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh is primordial in ensuring the long-term, sustainable security of the population and guarantee their right to live in their homeland. 
• Unblocking transportation/communication links must be carried out in full respect of sovereignty of the Republic of Armenia. Any potential risk of creating a new ground for conflict must be excluded.
• Border delimitation and demarcation between Armenia and Azerbaijan cannot be a consequence of the use of force and must not be carried out hastily without taking into consideration all the details of its consequences.
• Azerbaijan must immediately stop its state policy of Armenophobia in all its manifestations
• Following inter alia by the European Parliament as well as that of a number of parliaments of the EU Member states, Azerbaijan must immediately and unconditionally release all the Armenian prisoners of war and captives.