The Impact of the Court of Justice of the European Union on Azerbaijan
The relationship between the EU and Azerbaijan is ambivalent: strong economic cooperation, membership in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), on the one hand, and differences with regard to human rights issues and tough negotiations on a new Cooperation Agreement, on the other hand. However, many facts are in favour of strong impact of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) jurisprudence on Azerbaijan. Despite all the tensions, Azerbaijan consistently developed its legal system based on the European, especially German, model. European law is a mandatory course in the largest law faculty of the country. Azerbaijan has positive experience with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which plays an important role in the development of the legal and court systems of the country. The chapter shows that despite the favourable circumstances, the impact of the CJEU jurisprudence on Azerbaijan remains very limited. It analyses three decisions of the Constitutional Court referencing to CJEU jurisprudence. Furthermore, the author tries to identify the reasons for this by analysing the legal and courts systems, as well as the legal education, and comes up with several proposals on how to make the CJEU jurisprudence more fruitful for Azerbaijan, but also for other neighbouring jurisdictions.