Merz Chases Baku Gas Target

Friedrich Merz brought Ilham Aliyev to Berlin this week for the kind of meeting European capitals have learned to stage carefully since Russia turned gas into a weapon: flags, trade language, energy security, and no unnecessary dwelling on the supplier's politics (Euronews). Behind the ceremony sat the harder question. How much of Europe's move away from Russian gas is now resting on Azerbaijan, a state whose record makes Berlin's democratic language harder to sustain?

A Pledge, Not a Contract

Germany is not opening a new route so much as joining an existing one. Italy, Greece and Bulgaria have been taking Azerbaijani gas for years. The political frame was set in the July 2022 EU-Azerbaijan memorandum, when the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, pledged to support an increase in Azerbaijani gas deliveries to at least 20 billion cubic metres a year by 2027 (European Commission). That memorandum matters, but it is not EU law and it is not a purchase order. The hard obligations sit elsewhere, in commercial contracts between companies.

The route itself is real. Gas from Azerbaijan moves through three connected pipelines across the Caucasus and Turkey before entering the EU through the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which crosses Greece and Albania and comes ashore in southern Italy (TAP, IEA). In 2025, Azerbaijan supplied about 12.5 bcm to EU countries, roughly 8.1% of EU pipeline-gas imports (kmetro0.eu, Balcani Caucaso). That is useful supply, not a substitute for what Russia once provided.

Getting to the 20 bcm target would mean fresh investment in Azerbaijani gas fields, an expansion of TAP beyond its current 10 bcm design capacity, and European buyers prepared to sign the long-term contracts Baku wants before it commits money of its own (Serbia Energy).

Germany's Way In — and the Missing Northward Route

Germany's entry point is a specific commercial deal. The state-backed trader SEFE has signed a ten-year contract with Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR for 1.5 bcm a year from 2025 (Azernews). For Berlin, that gives Germany a stake in a corridor that has until now been built around south-eastern Europe.

The awkward bit is geography. To bring southern gas north to Germany, Europe needs the so-called Vertical Corridor: a chain of pipelines linking national gas grids through Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. Bulgarian upgrades are due by late 2026, but infrastructure is only part of the story. Governments and operators still have to settle who pays, who books the capacity, and how gas will actually move north when demand tightens. Those questions are not tidied away by a summit photograph.

Hungary shows how easily diversification can become a slogan with small numbers behind it. Budapest has signed for 800 million cubic metres over two years, about 3% of Hungary's annual imports (Makronom). The government presents the deal as sovereign energy strategy. Yet in the first five months of 2026, Hungary spent more on Russian pipeline gas than any other EU member state (Telex). A modest Azerbaijani contract can make the language of diversification easier without changing the underlying dependency.

No Rights Clause, No Transparency

The EU memorandum with Baku contains no enforceable human-rights conditions tied to gas deliveries (European Commission). Human Rights Watch describes Azerbaijan as a repressive state (HRW). After Azerbaijan's 2023 offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, the European Parliament, the EU's directly elected legislature, called for sanctions against Baku and urged the EU to end its gas dependence on Azerbaijan (Euronews). The Commission's energy diplomacy moved in the opposite direction.

There is another complication in the pipe. Global Witness has warned that Azerbaijan could increase exports to Europe partly by importing Russian gas for domestic use, freeing up its own production for EU customers (Global Witness). That does not prove Russian gas is being relabelled and sold on to Europe. It does, however, make the claim of a clean break from Russian supply harder to defend.

Europe has made Azerbaijan useful before it has made the relationship accountable. The take-or-pay clauses, which require buyers to pay whether or not they use the gas, along with the price formulas and exit terms that define Europe's real exposure, remain unpublished. Until governments release those terms, voters are being asked to accept that post-Russian diversification is not turning into a new dependency with a cleaner label.