ALDE Vice-Chair of the Euronest Assembly, Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (D66, Netherlands),  is in Azerbaijan to promote political and economic integration between the EU and its Eastern European Partners.

The Baku session is  being  attended by the EP delegation and national parliamentary delegations of Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan.

Gerbrandy: " The biggest achievement of this Euronest Assembly for me was not the adoption of five resolutions, but the fact that Armenian MP's for the first time were present in the Azeri Parliament and even met with Azeri President Aliyev. We should not underestimate the political importance of this historic moment".

Gerbrandy  is much more critical  about the state of the Azeri democracy, the human rights situation and the freedom of expression. "It is unacceptable that people are imprisoned just for their political believes". The Azeri authorities refused to allow Mr Gerbrandy access to political prisoners of the Musavat Party, M r. Arif Hajili and  M r. Tural Abbasli.

"I call upon the Azeri authorities to strongly improve the human rights situation in Azerbaijan and to use the full potential of its people, including those with opposing views. The EU should not close its eyes for the lack of democracy just because of the key role Azerbaijan plays in Europe's energy security objectives. The spot lights on Azerbaijan due to the Eurovision song contest in May 2012 should put pressure on the authorities to improve the human rights situation, also after the festival".  The ALDE vice-chair discussed possible improvements to democracy, human rights and freedom of press with President Aliyev personally.

Yesterday, the Assembly adopted a resolution on former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, calling for urgent medical treatment, her right to a fair trial, as well as for all political prisoners, and the necessary review of the Ukrainian criminal code.

Background Note:
The programme can be found here. The EURONEST Parliamentary Assembly is an EU/Eastern Partnership inter-parliamentary forum. It aims to step  up  the EU's engagement with the six partner countries in the East (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine). Euronest is responsible for parliamentary consultation, supervision and monitoring of the Eastern Partnership. It consists of the European Parliament delegation and the Eastern European Partners' delegations.

ELDR launched a campaign in support of freedom of press "Douze  points for freedom" to draw people's attention to attempts to limit media freedom.