The European Parliament on Thursday adopted a resolution condemning Azerbaijan and the EU’s handling of the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis, two weeks after Baku launched a lightning strike into the enclave, forcing 100,000 people to flee.
The resolution, which mentions “a gross violation of human rights and international law” and “unjustified military attack,” was adopted by an overwhelming majority of all groups: 491 MEPs voted in favor, with only nine against and 36 abstentions.
Lawmakers called for the EU and its member countries to urgently reassess the bloc’s ties with Azerbaijan and pushed to suspend “all imports of oil and gas from Azerbaijan to the EU in the event of military aggression against Armenian territorial integrity or … attacks against Armenia’s constitutional order and democratic institutions.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2022 signed an agreement to double purchases of Azerbaijani gas by 2027.
“The European Parliament is taking the gravity of the situation seriously by demanding an end to all imports of Azerbaijani gas and oil, now the Council and the Commission must finally act,” said François-Xavier Bellamy, a French conservative MEP, who supports Armenia.
Renew, the centrist group that also pushed for the resolution, said in statement that the EU and its member countries should now “increase both their presence on the ground and the humanitarian aid to people displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia or living in Nagorno-Karabakh.” However, the resolution did not win the support from one of its senior members, Bulgarian MEP Ilhan Kyuchyuk, who hails from his country’s ethnic Turkish party.
Lawmakers also wanted Azerbaijani officials to be sanctioned, even if EU countries will probably ignore the MEPs’ demand.
Eddy Wax contributed reporting.