In Berlin, Azerbaijan gets its most important European endorsement yet. A strong and perhaps bold statement. Well, the original plan was to hold this visit in March. It got delayed twice, due to the conflict between Iran and the general disruption in everyone's schedules across the region, and also due to the fact that Germany, under the leadership of Merz and in the process of its own geopolitical recalibration, was trying to figure out its foreign policy priorities. The fact that it actually took place this week, and with the range of agreements signed, says something about how urgently both sides now want this relationship formalised. That it also happened against the backdrop of a clandestine meeting in Baku about Ukraine says something rather more interesting about the geopolitical density of the moment.

The centrepiece of President Aliyev's Berlin visit was the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Strategic Agenda for Bilateral Partnership, the document that formally moves Azerbaijan-Germany relations from the transactional to the strategic. The agreement touches on energy, transportation, infrastructure, trade, investments, scientific and technological cooperation, defense industries cooperation, and digitalization. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the Joint Declaration, as Azerbaijani officials have been very accurate in pointing out, is the second such framework document that Azerbaijan signs with a large Western European country, after Italy. Germany is the biggest economy in the European Union.

Energy arithmetic of Eurasia

Energy is the foundation on which everything else in this bilateral relationship sits, and both sides spent considerable time in Berlin being precise about what that means in practice. This year, for the first time, natural gas is piped directly to Germany from Azerbaijan, a 10-year deal struck with German firms, with an initial capacity of 1.5 billion cubic meters per year, increasing to 2 billion next year. Azerbaijani President was explicit about the maximum amount of gas that can be supplied under current circumstances: since both TANAP and TAP are working at full capacity now, the existing........

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