Azerbaijan’s political tensions with European institutions have resurfaced after President Ilham Aliyev leveled sharp accusations against the European Parliament. During a meeting with international conference participants in Baku on September 15, 2026, Aliyev called the European Parliament a “nest of bribery” and said he was making the statement while assuming full responsibility for it.
Aliyev said Azerbaijan had been asking European institutions since 2001 to adopt a political decision on Nagorno-Karabakh, but that its requests had not received a response. He linked his remarks to disputes surrounding the Karabakh issue and European institutions’ stance toward Baku.
Baku accuses European institutions of double standards
The Azerbaijani president claimed that the Council of Europe imposed sanctions on Azerbaijan after the country reestablished control in Karabakh in September 2023, while no similar step was taken against Armenia. He presented this comparison as part of his assessment that European institutions had acted politically and with bias toward Azerbaijan.
Aliyev also accused European institutions of applying double standards. He said Western media coverage criticizing Azerbaijan contained Islamophobic approaches and assessed the political response to its Karabakh policy alongside debates over representation and corruption within European institutions.
He raises case involving former official
Aliyev also cited a corruption case said to be linked to one of the European Parliament’s former vice presidents. The Azerbaijani president claimed that no necessary action had been taken against an official who had millions of dollars in his home.
Aliyev used this claim as one of the grounds for his political accusation against the European Parliament. There is no independent verification establishing that the person in question was definitively responsible for corruption.
Tensions date back to a 2015 resolution
On September 10, 2015, the European Parliament adopted a resolution expressing concern over human rights and corruption allegations in Azerbaijan. The resolution called for allegations linked to the Azerbaijani authorities to be investigated. This stance became one of the earlier stages of the political tensions between Baku and European institutions.
Azerbaijan’s influence and political reach around European institutions have also been the subject of controversies previously described as “caviar diplomacy.” In a case in Italy, former Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe member Luca Volontè was accused of receiving money to influence decisions in Azerbaijan’s favor, and his conviction in the case became one of the examples cited in corruption debates surrounding European institutions.
The European Parliament and the Council of Europe are separate institutions. The Volontè case concerned the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, while Aliyev’s latest remarks directly targeted the European Parliament. This distinction is important for assessing the institutional framework of the political debate between Baku and European institutions.
