8. No Action on the Action Plan
One of the instruments used for reforms in Azerbaijan is the Action Plan, a comprehensive program designed to align the country’s policy standards with those of the Council of Europe. However, its effectiveness has been questioned from the outset, despite over 9 million euros being invested in the program over the past decade.
Launched in 2014, the Action Plan was developed as a joint initiative between the CoE and the authorities of Azerbaijan. Its purpose was to support the country in meeting its statutory and specific obligations as a member state of the CoE, while addressing core challenges in the areas of human rights and the rule of law. The focus remained on the CoE’s key areas of expertise: promoting and protecting human rights, strengthening the rule of law, and fostering democratic governance. Implemented in two- or three-year cycles, subsequent editions of the Action Plan failed to halt the country's authoritarian trajectory, yet it continued to be rolled out.
The latest 2022-2025 edition was aimed to “support key national reforms and ultimately bring the country’s legislative and regulatory frameworks, institutions and practice further in line with European standards.”
There were clear objectives: effectively implementing the ECHR and ECtHR judgments; strengthening judicial independence and efficiency; enhancing the autonomy and capacity of the Azerbaijani Bar Association (ABA) and legal aid frameworks; aligning criminal justice practices with Council of Europe standards; and ensuring safer conditions for civic space, media, and elections.
In practice, outcomes went in the opposite direction. Azerbaijan’s authorities curtailed cooperation with key CoE mechanisms, rejected the validity of ECtHR judgments, intensified pressure on lawyers, journalists, and NGOs, and conducted non-competitive elections – all of which undermined the goals of the Action Plan. Furthermore, the Action Plan’s core theory of change, which aimed to achieve reform through technical cooperation, monitoring, and political dialogue, proved impossible to implement without political will.
It didn’t stop, though, the CoE – or the EU, which is the plan’s primary funder – from continuing the program without any conditionality in place or proper evaluation of the impact of the previous editions of the plan.