For much of 2024, President Ilham Aliyev has been airing grievances about the European Union’s supposedly hypocritical treatment of Azerbaijan and the rest of the Global South. Now, state-controlled media outlets in Azerbaijan have taken to warning about the EU’s efforts to tighten relations with Baku’s arch-rival, Armenia.

Since the July 23 announcement that the EU will launch negotiations to grant Armenians visa-free travel privileges, prominent Azerbaijani media outlets have published a stream of commentaries contending that embarking on the road to EU accession for Armenia will end in disappointment for both sides.

Immediately after the announcement, the official Azertag news agency published an editorial, headlined “The EU won’t manage to solve its big problems with little Armenia,” arguing that giving Armenians visa-free travel privileges will only exacerbate the union’s immigration challenges. The commentary noted that large numbers of Armenians, lacking opportunities at home, head abroad to find work. Most presently head to Russia, but that would quickly change, if the EU offers visa-free entry, according to the Azertag piece. “This would be the opening of a new door for the escape of the population in a country that is heading towards emptying,” the editorial claimed.

Another commentary published by Report.az on August 5 hammered away at the migration theme, alleging that it would exacerbate migration woes in the EU while proving a demographic disaster for the Armenian state. “In the full sense of the word, there will be no Armenians in Armenia, because throughout history, representatives of this ethnic group … have scattered” around the world, the commentary stated, adding that EU visa-free privileges will “certainly only speed up that process."

Report.az also contended that the extension of EU military assistance under the European Peace Facility will end up embroiling Yerevan in renewed, and potentially more destructive warfare, cautioning that Armenia could become another Ukraine, where the West is backing Kyiv’s war effort against Russia. A report broadcast by Azerbaijan’s public television went so far as to suggest that the EU aid sent to Armenia would be used specifically to lay the groundwork for renewed conflict. 

Armenia’s desire to escape from Russia’s geopolitical stranglehold is the prime motivator for Yerevan’s recent turn to the West. Many Armenians now resent Russia for failing to uphold security guarantees during the Second Karabakh War, which resulted in Azerbaijan’s reconquest of the territory.

While Armenians may feel forsaken by Russia, Aliyev and many of his countrymen appear to feel embittered by rejection on the part of the EU. For years, Aliyev sought to cultivate a favorable image for his government and his country in European eyes. Philanthropic giving in the cultural sphere, for example, succeeded to a certain extent in boosting Azerbaijan’s profile as a Europeanizing state, underscored by a 2016 visit to Baku by Pope Francis.

But following Azerbaijan’s successful campaign to regain Karabakh, EU-Azerbaijani relations have gone into a tailspin, driven in part by a perception in Baku of EU favoritism toward Armenia in peace negotiations. In recent months, Aliyev has castigated the Council of Europe and other European institutions, while harboring particular animus for France.

In the Azerbaijani media blitz against the burgeoning relationship between the EU and Armenia there can be found notes of bitterness about perceived EU prejudice. Many in Baku believe Armenia’s Christian cultural identity is a major factor in fostering Brussels’ supposed preference for Yerevan in the South Caucasus. 

“It is out of racial, religious discrimination and Christian bigotry that the European Union shows such loyalty to Armenia at a time when it tightens the visa regime for the people of African and Islamic countries, whose resources it exploits,” the Azertag editorial quoted Yalçın Hajizadeh, the deputy chair of the pro-Aliyev Motherland Party, as saying.