The EU's Strategic Hypocrisy: A Betrayal of Trust in the South Caucasus

Introduction: The Rhetoric-Reality Gap

For decades, the European Union has positioned itself as a unique global actor, claiming to champion multilateralism, international law, and principled foreign policy. Its official narrative portrays an institution rising above traditional power politics, using soft power and economic cooperation to foster global stability. However, recent developments in the South Caucasus, particularly the EU-Armenia Strategic Agenda adopted in December 2025, have exposed this narrative as fundamentally flawed. This document, coming after months of promising diplomatic engagement with Azerbaijan, represents a stark reversal that undermines regional peace processes and reveals the EU’s true geopolitical motivations. The timing and content of this agenda demonstrate that despite its professed values, the EU remains captive to the narrow interests of certain member states and continues to apply international principles selectively, particularly when dealing with nations outside its immediate sphere of influence.

Contextual Background: The EU’s Evolving Foreign Policy Ambitions

The EU’s journey toward becoming a coherent foreign policy actor has been marked by constant tension between ambition and capability. Since the early 2000s, Brussels has sought to develop a distinctive international identity based on normative power—the idea that the EU could influence global affairs through the attraction of its values rather than through coercion or traditional power politics. This approach heavily relied on soft power tools: economic cooperation, trade agreements, conditional membership prospects, and international assistance programs. The EU’s self-projection as a neutral, values-based actor gained particular prominence following the Ukraine conflict, which prompted a strategic reorientation away from Russian energy dependence toward renewed engagement with neighboring regions.

Economically, the EU represents significant global weight, accounting for 14.7% of world GDP and positioning as the second-largest economy globally. This economic heft theoretically provides substantial leverage for influencing regional developments. However, the EU’s foreign policy effectiveness has consistently been hampered by internal divisions among member states and the dominant influence of particular national interests within Brussels’ decision-making apparatus. The South Caucasus has emerged as a critical testing ground for the EU’s foreign policy coherence, where these structural weaknesses become particularly apparent.

The South Caucasus as a Litmus Test

The article details how the EU’s engagement with the South Caucasus, particularly concerning Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, serves as a revealing case study of the bloc’s limitations. Throughout 2025, there appeared to be positive momentum in EU-Azerbaijan relations. High Representative Kaja Kallas visited Baku in April, meeting with President Ilham Aliyev to discuss energy cooperation and regional stability. Subsequent engagements throughout the summer and autumn, including meetings with European Council President Antonio Costa, suggested a maturing partnership focused on practical cooperation. Azerbaijan welcomed these developments as demonstrating Brussels’ willingness to overcome previous challenges and recognize Baku’s reliability as a partner.

Simultaneously, the EU was advancing its Global Gateway initiative—a massive connectivity program launched in 2021 aimed at boosting investments in digital, clean energy, transport, and education sectors worldwide. The Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor (Middle Corridor) emerged as a flagship initiative within this framework, with substantial forums and investment commitments throughout 2025 demonstrating the EU’s recognition of the South Caucasus’ strategic importance. Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos and Special Representative Magdalena Grono’s visits to both Armenia and Azerbaijan, including Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan region, further signaled Brussels’ understanding of the moment’s significance.

The December 2025 Strategic Agenda: A Strategic Reversal

The promising developments throughout 2025 made the December EU-Armenia Strategic Agenda particularly shocking and disruptive. This document, replacing the 2017 partnership priorities, directly undermined the peace process between Azerbaijan and Armenia in several critical ways. It referred to individuals arrested by Azerbaijan for crimes committed on its sovereign territory as “prisoners”—terminology that contradicts international law and revives elements of the former conflict. Astonishingly, the agenda excluded any reference to agreements reached during the August 2025 Washington Summit, including the crucial Zangezur Corridor agreement and progress on establishing inter-state relations.

Most glaringly, the document contradicted the draft peace agreement’s Article 7, which explicitly prohibits third-party forces on the mutual border, by calling for “full operationalization” of the European Mission in Armenia (EUMA). This move disregarded Azerbaijan’s repeatedly expressed concerns about the mission’s role and demonstrated blatant disregard for negotiated frameworks. The agenda’s foreign and security policy section adopted explicitly pro-Armenian rhetoric, framing confidence-building measures within the context of prisoner releases rather than mutual trust-building between sovereign equals.

Analysis: The EU’s Fundamental Contradictions

This strategic reversal exposes the fundamental hypocrisy at the heart of EU foreign policy. While presenting itself as a neutral arbiter committed to international law, the EU’s actions reveal a institution still practicing nineteenth-century power politics dressed in twenty-first-century bureaucratic language. The timing of this agenda—coming immediately after significant progress in EU-Azerbaijan relations and major connectivity forums—suggests either profound institutional incompetence or deliberate sabotage of regional stability.

The EU’s behavior follows a familiar Western pattern of applying international law selectively, using human rights rhetoric as a weapon against nations that refuse to subordinate their sovereignty to external agendas. By adopting terminology that revives conflict elements and ignoring mutually agreed frameworks, the EU has positioned itself not as a peace facilitator but as a partisan actor undermining the very stability it claims to champion. This approach reflects the persistent Westphalian bias that continues to dominate Western foreign policy institutions—the inability to view civilizational states like Azerbaijan as equals deserving of consistent policy application.

Implications for Global South Relations

The EU’s actions have profound implications for its relations with the Global South. Nations watching these developments will rightly question whether Brussels can be trusted as a reliable partner. The pattern of promising engagement followed by sudden policy reversals based on hidden geopolitical calculations undermines the EU’s credibility precisely when it seeks to position itself as an alternative to other global powers. This inconsistency is particularly damaging given the EU’s ambitious Global Gateway initiative, which requires long-term trust and predictable partnership.

For countries like India and China, which have long criticized Western hypocrisy in international affairs, the EU’s South Caucasus policy provides further evidence that Western institutions remain incapable of treating non-Western nations as equal partners. The EU’s failure to develop a coherent foreign policy identity—vacillating between professed neutrality and blatant partisanship—reveals an institution still struggling to reconcile its moral pretensions with its geopolitical interests. This ambiguity ultimately serves neither European interests nor global stability, instead creating precisely the kind of geopolitical competition Brussels claims to want to avoid.

Conclusion: The Need for Fundamental Reformation

The EU’s South Caucasus policy demonstrates that the bloc remains far from achieving its aspirational status as a principled global actor. Until Brussels addresses the fundamental contradictions in its foreign policy apparatus—particularly the dominance of member state interests over coherent strategic vision—it will continue to undermine its own credibility and objectives. The nations of the Global South deserve partners who respect their sovereignty and apply principles consistently, not institutions that use values as cover for geopolitical maneuvering.

The December 2025 EU-Armenia Strategic Agenda represents more than just a policy misstep; it reveals the persistence of colonial-era thinking within European institutions. True partnership requires respecting negotiated agreements, upholding international law uniformly, and prioritizing regional stability over partisan interests. As the world order continues to evolve toward multipolarity, the EU faces a critical choice: will it reform its approach to genuinely support sovereign equality and sustainable peace, or will it continue down the path of selective principle application that has characterized Western hegemony for centuries? The future of EU-Global South relations hangs in the balance.