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Final June, a Latvian socialist MEP went to Azerbaijan and sang its praises — however the EU Parliament committee he claimed to signify had no thought he was there.
The story of Andris Ameriks’ freewheeling journey is the second in a sequence along with Swedish-German investigative platform Blankspot on how Azerbaijan cultivates associates within the EU establishments.
Blankspot’s first investigation uncovered how Azerbaijan wined and dined two MEPs and their 5 assistants in undeclared hospitality on a visit final September.
Neither Ameriks nor the others have been accused of breaking any legal guidelines.
However their irregular journeys come within the context of the Qatargate bribery affair, posing questions on the reliability of EU Parliament ethics codes.
They compound Azerbaijan’s popularity for shady lobbying techniques.
They usually present how one Azeri invitation lubricates one other within the petro-dictatorship’s Brussels-influence marketing campaign.
First Ameriks in June 2022, then German liberal MEP Engin Eroglu and Slovenian conservative MEP Franc Bogovič in September, visited the war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh area as a part of their excursions.
Senior EU diplomats do not go there for concern of giving the impression that Europe is taking sides in an unpleasant ethnic battle, which noticed Azerbaijan reconquer Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia in 2020.
However when Eroglu and Bogovič justified their journey to colleagues, they stated it was OK for MEPs to go since Ameriks already did it.
“MEP and vice-chair of the Tran committee, Andris Ameriks, had additionally visited the Aghali sensible village [in Nagorno-Karabakh] earlier to us, which additional empowered our will to journey,” they wrote in an inner electronic mail in January this 12 months, referring to the EU Parliament’s transport committee.
Ameriks is a member of the Honor to Serve Riga get together, which is within the European Social Democrats (S&D) group within the EU meeting.
His relationship with Azerbaijan goes again to no less than 2011, when he was a board member of the Freeport of Riga.
On the time, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev personally paid a go to to the Latvian port to debate collaborations with Ameriks and fellow board members.
Two years later, Ameriks (now head of the board of Riga Freeport) signed a number of agreements with the newly constructed Freeport of Baku.
In 2015, Ameriks (now vice-mayor of Riga) travelled twice to Azerbaijan and cast a cooperation deal between Riga and Surakhani, a Baku suburb.
“Let me begin by saying that I’m a pal of Azerbaijan”, he advised Azerbaijan state information company Azertag in an interview on a kind of visits.
Friendship
And certainly he his.
After resigning as vice-mayor in December 2018 resulting from his involvement in a corruption scandal, Ameriks made a speedy political comeback.
Simply two months later, he declared he was operating for a seat within the European Parliament within the Could 2019 elections and received in.
And shortly after taking on his parliament submit, he based the casual “Group of Pals of Azerbaijan”, which again then consisted of eight MEPs from 5 completely different political teams.
In an interview in Azerbaijan with nationwide TV on his newest journey in June 2022, Ameriks described the work of the group as being “difficult because of the pandemic”, however reassured Azeri viewers issues had been getting again to regular.
He stated that, as an MEP, he was in an excellent place to enhance EU-Azerbaijan relations.
He additionally stated he was in Azerbaijan on an “official” journey and touring in his function as Tran vice-president.
He repeatedly used his Tran committee title throughout his journey, however when Blankspot requested Tran officers what he was doing in Azerbaijan, they stated there was no document of Ameriks representing them there.
They did not touch upon whether or not Ameriks had misbehaved.
However whereas Eroglu and Bogovič had pledged to not focus on the Armenia battle whereas they had been in Azerbaijan, Ameriks was much less shy of controversy.
One among his conferences was with the minister of digital improvement and transport, Rashad Nabiyev, which mentioned the Zangezur hall.
That is meant to at some point join Azerbaijan — through Armenia — to Azerbaijan’s exclave Nakhchivan, however its standing remains to be being negotiated and it stays closed for now.
Ameriks made his expedition to the sting of Europe although, again in Brussels, Baku’s pal by no means used to say Azerbaijan in EU Parliament debates.
Actually, his solely recorded hyperlink to associated parliament motions was a exceptional vote in March 2022.
On the time, the EU Parliament handed a decision saying Azerbaijan promoted a “systematic, state-level coverage of Armenophobia, historic revisionism and hatred in the direction of Armenians, […] together with dehumanisation, the glorification of violence” and that it “threaten[s] peace and safety within the South Caucasus”.
It handed by a whopping 635 votes towards two, with 42 abstentions.
And the entire S&D group voted for it, apart from one insurgent — Ameriks.
The one different ‘No’ vote was Dutch far-right MEP Marcel de Graaff.
Again-pedalling
Blankspot requested Ameriks who paid for his journey final June, who he represented when he was there, and who drew up his itinerary.
He stated the journey was paid out of the EU Parliament finances, apart from his go to to the village of Aghali and the city of Shusha in Nagorno-Karabakh.
This half was taken care of by the Milli Majlis — president Aliyev’s rubber-stamp parliament.
The itinerary was deliberate collectively by the Azeris and Ameriks’ workplace.
And the journey adopted an official invitation by the Milli Majlis and by Azerbaijan’s ambassador in Brussels, Vaqif Sadiqov (who additionally reached out to Eroglu and Bogovič to ask them in September).
Ameriks stated he went in his function as chair of the Group of Pals of Azerbaijan, not as Tran vice-president, back-pedalling on his personal feedback to Azeri media whereas he was travelling round.
Blankspot additionally requested the socialist MEP if Azerbaijan may very well be in comparison with Belarus and Russia by way of home human-rights abuses, seeing as all of them get equally dismal scores from NGOs reminiscent of Freedom Home and Human Rights Watch.
However as an alternative of answering on human rights, Ameriks stated Azerbaijan is nothing like Russia or Belarus, as a result of Russia is killing civilians in Ukraine, whereas Azerbaijan has despatched humanitarian assist there.
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