Remarks by President Charles Michel following the meeting with Prime Minister Pashinyan, Chancellor Scholz and President Macron

Good afternoon, everyone. We just had a good meeting with Prime Minister Pashinyan, together with Chancellor Scholz and President Emmanuel Macron. We issued a clear joint communiqué. We believe in diplomacy, we believe in political dialogue, and that is why I will invite both leaders – Prime Minister Pashinyan and President Aliyev – to a meeting in Brussels by the end of October.

I think three principles are extremely important. First, the mutual recognition of the territorial sovereignty and integrity of both Azerbaijan and Armenia, including taking into account the square kilometres. The second important principle is the idea that the delimitation of the borders should be based – must be based – on the Almaty declaration. And the third important principle is related to connectivity. The development of connectivity is of the utmost importance, but it must be based on the principles of sovereignty, jurisdiction and reciprocity.

Finally, I would like to share with you that we are determined to play a positive role – a constructive role – in the normalisation process, and that is why several elements are important: the peace treaty, the delimitation of the borders, connectivity, the exchange of prisoners, the question of missing persons, and demining.

You can see that we are determined to play a role to support a stable and prosperous Caucasus. We do not have any hidden agenda, and that is why we think that we can be an effective interlocutor to support efforts towards more stability, more prosperity and more security.

And it shows that this unique political platform, this intergovernmental and leaders' platform, is relevant. It is relevant because in addition to the plenary session, in addition to the round tables, which allow for a sincere and direct exchange of views on fundamental challenges that we are facing together on the European continent, there is the possibility to have many informal bilateral conversations at the level of the leaders. This is what we did here, and this is useful because it is helpful to prepare the next steps. And the next steps will be – for Azerbaijan and Armenia – that meeting that is supposed to take place by the end of October. This is what I wanted to share with you.