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The paper by Katrin Bottger and Mariella Falkenhain “The EU’s policy towards Azerbaijan and the role of civil society” (full version here) is valuable first of all because it turns to the “difficult cases” of the ENP and Eastern partnership, which rarely become focus of a special research.

It attracts the attention to the EU relations with Azerbaijan, which the experts and scholars usually prefer not to dig too deep into. This happens because of ambiguity and unclear nature of these relations.

In the early 1990s Azerbaijan had a clear vision that the survival of the modern nation state, as it was formed in the early 20^th century and restored after collapse of the Soviet Union, is not possible without integration in the EU. As the very foundation of Azerbaijan republic was a legislation based on liberal freedoms and rights and the elites had shared vision of the country as part of Europe, it was natural for the post-Soviet Azerbaijan to choose the way of integration in European and Euro-Atlantic structures.

However, after more than 15 years of relations between the EU and Azerbaijan it seems there is less clarity regarding interests of the parties, at least for the external observers and the public.

The fact that Azerbaijan was first included in the European Neighborhood Policy, and later in the Eastern Partnership, along with 4 other states of the Former Soviet Union signaled an important perception of this country by the EU as part of wider Europe, or simply Europe, but not of Central Asia, or Middle East.

In this sense Azerbaijan was given a chance along with Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine and Moldova to get closer to the EU through deeper integration and to prove country’s capacity to do so.

But it takes two indeed to make this possible. While many observers stressed increasing autocratic trends in many states of the FSU, including members of the ENP ad EaP, thus attracting attention to responsibilities of the political leaders for the quality of these relations and the speed of integration, there are certainly policy flaws and miscalculations on the side of the EU.

Indeed, the EU faces a qualitatively different and additional - to the other common among post-Soviet states - barrier to its policies in the Caspian.

The main trait which differentiates Caspian littorals from the other members of the EaP is that they all possess significant hydrocarbon resources. This seems to be an advantage, as it gives the country the access to the enormous resources to soften calamities of economic transition. But in the absence of the mature democratic institutions of public control and strong state institutions, the “ plenty” turns into a “resource curse”. Most importantly, it forms special conditions of the implementation of the EU policies, reflecting the dilemma, which is often being ignored.

The dilemma is created by the two sets of interests – those of energy security, and the promotion of reforms. There is apparently a way to reconcile the two, but very few actors are actually trying to do so. One of the assumptions is that EU may have doubts about capacity of the Caspian states to develop liberal democracy, and that it prioritizes energy agenda over more difficult and challenging task. This obviously forms a need to look deeper into this peculiarity and develop an individually tailored policies, given there is an EU’s genuine desire to promote democracy in the European neighborhood.

The paper by K. Bottger and M. Falkenhain is yet another confirmation of the influence of the oil factor on the policies of the external actors, who declare reform promotion agenda. It follows how consistent is realization of the EU normative agenda in Azerbaijan.

The authors analyze the EU policies in the country, where the domestic structures are not conducive for reforms. In such case, the source of reforms, it is assumed, is outside of the official institutions, namely in civil society. It tests the degree to which the EU relies on civil society as its partner and empowers it .

According to the paper, there is a lack of inclusion of the civil society in implementation of the ENP, which is an evidence that Azerbaijan the EU implements ENP goals only partially and inconsistently. The authors directly point to the reason – the energy interests make the EU keep good and closer relations with the government, rather than civil society.

Indeed, the civil society has been the most consistent promoter of the liberal freedoms, open political system and human rights in this part of the world since early 90s. The farther one goes to the East from the EU, however, the less there has been a direct investment in the civil actors. This conditioned the unequal struggle for the promotion of democracy of the open minded, reform oriented but underinvested society against the post-Soviet ruling elites empowered by multibillion oil /gas revenues.

There are a few ways, which authors mention , to strengthen civil society’s participation, among which is their capacity building and political empowerment at the decision making level. While both are important, the significance of the financial support should not be underestimated. The miniscule resources which local NGOs possess cannot make them compete with the state institutions, first of all “think tanks” and other independent institutions, which would allow them to attract the young well educated generation, whose joining NGOs is crucial for weak civil society. But on all counts, to advance the promotion of the reform agenda, the EU should invest more adequately in its genuine partner to match declared goals in the policy documents.

The importance of the paper is that it “calls on the EU to act without waiting for the change in the current political situation”. It became common that external actors, such as the EU and the US, come to deal with the “crisis management”, failing to promote smooth transition through development assistance in the countries of operations. So it is important to act before the situation developed into the crisis, as the “Arab Spring” showed.

The paper correctly stresses that the EU should re-think its approach to the civil society in Azerbaijan, making it a real partner not only on paper, but in practice and suggests the number of recommendations to achieve that goal. While inclusion of civil society related issues in the political dialogue with the government and support for capacity building of the NGOs are both undeniably important suggestions, the ratio of the government financial aid to the civil society ( as expressed in ratio of the budget support, twinning etc. to the aid given directly to civil society) should also be a subject of a serious rethinking. The latter should take into account greater needs in financial resources of the societies of the oil rich states, as compared to the other states in transition, to counterbalance the oil revenues derived financial power of ruling elites.

The new Eastern Partnership Policy, learning lessons from ENP implementation in the autocratic states, has introduced an innovative institution – the Civil Society Forum- to strengthen and multiply the influence of the civil sector- mainly NGOs- on the ENP and EaP implementation. This is a step forward, but has to be accompanied by the introduction of the clauses in the policy’s major documents, providing for obligatory participation of the NGOs and non state actors at all stages of the decision making, negotiations and implementation of the EaP. This institution’s major objective should be empowerment of the civil society to influence on the decision making process in Brussels, but first and foremost at the national level. One of the ways to achieve it – to become more vigilant regarding participation of GoNGOs ( governmental NGOs) in this process.

The most valuable conclusion and recommendation of the paper is a reminder, that the argument of resource based independence, leading to too cautious EU policies in reform promotion is a conventional idea. In fact, Azerbaijan is interested as much in selling the oil and gas to EU, as the EU is interested in buying them, argue the authors. Azerbaijan is self sufficient in financial terms, but still in need of the European “know how” and technologies. And last, but not least is that the rule of law, democracy and transparency is in the interests not only the EU, but of “oil companies, that would like to invest in the country and to see their investments to be protected by states”. With all the attractiveness of the last assertion, there is still way to go to make it a well established interest and sustainable practice.