The South Caucasus tour of Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, has ended. The visits to Baku and Yerevan on July 1-2 actually confirmed that the European Union is moving to a much more practical and practical policy in the South Caucasus, adopting a strategy of economic and infrastructural integration of the region.

If in previous years the main priority of Brussels was the mediating role in the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiation process, now the EU has moved on to the promotion of specific projects, the strategy of connecting the region to the EU, integrating it and completely removing it from Russian influence. The statements made in Baku and Yerevan once again showed that the EU views the region as a corridor connecting Europe with the Black Sea, the Caspian Basin and Central Asia. That is why von der Leyen emphasized the idea that peace is a necessary condition for economic and geopolitical investments. “We need to move peace from paper to real life,” he announced in Baku, presenting the “Peace through Connectivity” initiative.

Azerbaijan, as a regional connecting node, was at the core of the European Commission president’s messages in Baku. Von der Leyen announced a grant program of up to €200 million to boost transport, energy and digital connectivity, further attracting up to €2 billion in public and private investment. He spoke about the development of the port of Baku, railway communication in the direction of Nakhichevan, regional channels of the South Caucasus and even the possibility of electric power infrastructures passing through Armenia. At the same time, von der Leyen highly appreciated Azerbaijan’s role in Europe’s energy security, reminding that “when Russia turned energy into a weapon, Azerbaijan helped Europe.” This was a key impulse, Brussels reaffirmed that Azerbaijan remains one of the key energy partners of the EU.

In Yerevan, however, the emphasis was different. The primary topic here was not energy, but Armenia’s economic resilience and integration with European markets in the face of Russia’s economic pressures. Von der Leyen openly stated that Armenia can “rely on the European Union”, stressing that Brussels is ready to support Yerevan in mitigating the impact of Russian economic restrictions.

In that context, financial support for Armenia was announced, as well as the initiative to eliminate customs duties on around 80 percent of Armenian exports. Von der Leyen specially emphasized that it is not only about financial aid, but about changing the economic direction of Armenia through integration into the European economic system.

He noted that the EU is ready to support not only economic diversification, but also energy diversification, stressing that the EU has rich experience in such matters, which it has accumulated through the examples of Ukraine and Moldova. Therefore, according to him, EU experts will arrive in RA and study the issues on the spot. He also spoke about energy, linking it to the region.

If the two visits are considered as a whole, and they are clearly within the scope of one agenda, it becomes obvious that the European Union is trying to build a new geopolitical architecture of the South Caucasus. In that EU project, Armenia and Azerbaijan are considered not as separate partners, but as components of one regional system.

It is this political, transport and energy connectivity that will enable the EU to implement the communication, energy and digital projects planned within the framework of the “Global Gateway”. By the way, the EU recently launched the “Connectivity Agenda Platform” initiative, which was created in order to strengthen the connectivity agenda between the South Caucasus, the Black Sea region, Turkey and Central Asia and promote the interregional connectivity agenda within the framework of the EU’s “Global Gateways” strategy.

In other words, the EU strives to form a unified logistics axis, which will gradually reduce the importance of traditional communication routes passing through the territory of Russia and increase the European presence in the region.

The Russian factor was not absent from these visits. Although it was presented differently in the two capitals, it was actually the context of the entire visit. In Baku, von der Leyen reminded that Europe was able to reduce its dependence on Russian gas during the energy crisis thanks to Azerbaijan, and in Yerevan he already spoke about Russia’s economic pressures and the EU’s willingness to compensate for this impact.

Thus, Brussels solves several geopolitical problems at the same time. And it does it in a rather fast and intense mode. Therefore, von der Leyen’s visit should be considered not only as an initiative to promote Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, but also as part of the European Union’s long-term competitive strategy aimed at limiting Russia’s influence in the South Caucasus.

The European Union is starting to act in the region not as a classic mediator, but as an investor and economic actor. Thus, the visits on July 1-2 can be evaluated as the start of the new South Caucasus strategy of the European Union, where the EU starts the programs that have been talked about for years.

However, the viability of these initiatives remains conditional, as their implementation is at the center of a clash of interests between Russia, Iran and the US, where every geopolitical shift can change the rules of the game. Ultimately, the future of the South Caucasus depends not only on European ambitions, but also on the balance of China’s economic expansion and the calculations of other actors, which turn the region into a difficult point of confrontation.

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