Shaping the Policy Agenda: British-Azerbaijani Relations in the Context of Europe
On 4 July 2013, the Royal United Services Institute and SAM, the Center for Strategic Studies under the President of Azerbaijan, held a closed-door roundtable to examine the British–Azerbaijani relationship in the broader European context
Entitled 'Shaping the Agenda' and hosted by RUSI, the roundtable brought together a mix of British, Azerbaijani and EU diplomats, think-tank and NGO representatives, and private-sector parties to explore the current state of the bilateral relationship and directions for its future development.
The day-long exchange elicited open discussion of each side’s perceptions of the relationship, of areas of alignment and divergence of interests, and of the conditioning effects of structures such as the European Union, NATO and OSCE Minsk Group. Although it stops short of making policy recommendations for either London or Baku, this report draws together the themes that emerged over the course of the day in the aim of providing readers with a sense of both the limits to, and promising avenues for, the strengthening of the relationship in the near-to-medium term.