The declaration’s published language aims cooperation at connectivity, infrastructure and energy flows including gas. At the press conference Merz said Germany, having ended Russian gas purchases four and a half years ago, wants to diversify supply with Azerbaijan and discussed possibilities for larger purchases, a subject he assigned to further negotiations. Aliyev said gas deliveries to Germany began this year, and that Azerbaijan intends in future to ship green energy to Europe as well.
For the region the signature matters as architecture. The corridor’s western anchor now holds a formal strategic frame with the EU’s largest economy while its dispute with Moscow stays open, and the states shipping east-west gain a reference document to point at. The conversion tests are unchanged: a gas volume, a corridor financing line, and the first Economic Council agenda.