In a text adopted on November 15 ahead of the Eastern Partnership Summit to be held in Brussels on November 24, the European Parliament recommended the Council, the Commission and the European External Action Service to call for an immediate end to military hostilities between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, which unnecessarily claim the lives of civilians and soldiers whilst hampering socioeconomic development.
The European Parliament also advises to reaffirm support for the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs’ efforts to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and to their 2009 Basic Principles, which include territorial integrity, self-determination and the non-use of force.
It recommends to call on Armenia and Azerbaijan to re-launch negotiations in good faith with a view to implementing these principles to solve the conflict, which cannot be solved using military force, to call on the Governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan to hold high-level talks and commit to genuine confidence-building measures and dialogue between Armenian and Azerbaijani civil society; to make the ratification of new agreements between the EU and each of the parties conditional on meaningful commitments to and substantial progress towards solving the conflict, such as maintaining the ceasefire and supporting the implementation of the 2009 Basic Principles.
The European Parliament stresses that Armenia serves as an example of how membership of the Eurasian Economic Union and participation in the EU’s neighborhood strategies can coexist.
