On 20 May, at a plenary session of the European Parliament, Resolution 2216 on "the Need for an EU Strategy for the South Caucasus", authored by Bulgarian MEP Evgeni Kirilov, was submitted for voting and adopted. It contains very clear points regarding the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Through this document, the European Parliament refers to the status quo in the region as "created by force and with no international legitimacy" and makes a call to avoid steps which would maintain the current situation. Besides this, the resolution asks for the withdrawal of "Armenian forces" from "all occupied territories of Azerbaijan". The resolution also contains certain provisions for the future of Nagorno-Karabakh’s status, or rather the lack thereof, noting that "an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh could offer a solution until the final status is determined and that it could create a transitional framework for peaceful coexistence and cooperation of Armenian and Azerbaijani populations in the region". It also notes the importance of avoiding military rhetoric and resolving the conflict only through peaceful negotiations. The two sides involved in the negotiation process, Armenia and Azerbaijan, were quick to react to the adoption of Resolution 2216. Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan, said the following in a joint press conference with the Foreign Minister of Argentina, on 21 May, "The points in the resolution regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh issue are not in line with the Madrid Principles or declarations at L’Aquila and Moscow, to which the document refers. There is a clear confusion in the wording and I think one of the reasons is that the author has never been to Karabakh or to the region and has not even consulted the representative of France, an EU-member and OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair. And that is why some of the points even contradict the EU position." The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan made an announcement in which it welcomed the adoption of the resolution. "This resolution gained the support of the main powers in the European Parliament, despite the desperate efforts of the Armenian side to prevent its adoption. The Ministry believes that this direct and timely announcement will be a signal for Armenia to stop delaying the process of conflict resolution and the adoption of a constructive approach to dialogue, based on the principles outlined in the resolution," an announcement circulated by the Ministry said. The unabashed glee of the Azerbaijani side and the wording of the resolution clearly show that the Armenian side was not taken into consideration in its writing and that the document has a clearly pro-Azerbaijan viewpoint. That leads to a question – how was it possible to adopt a resolution of this kind right under the nose of Armenian diplomacy when, in essence, defeating a document with such wording should not have presented a difficult task? After all, the resolution which was adopted went against the declaration at L’Aquila, made in July 2009 by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, the Meiendorf declaration and the joint declaration at the 17^{th session of the OSCE Council of Ministers meeting in Athens. Simply invoking these documents would have been enough to convince both the author of resolutions 2216 and the leading powers of the European Parliament that the wording in the document was wrong and went against the logic of conflict resolution.} Moreover, the resolution was accepted by the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in early April and Armenia had nearly two months to influence the process and make notable changes. On 21 May, ARF representative Artsvik Minasyan said that the original version of the document had been much worse. "I don’t remember the exact wording, but the general idea was that Nagorno-Karabakh was presented as a movement of separatists," he said, adding that changes had been made through the ARF’s European body, Hay Dat. It is obvious that if one political power can use its channels to make changes in this document, official Yerevan could have done much more. Minasyan’s statement leads to the conclusion that either the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not know about the resolution and learned of it only after it was adopted or that it knew and was unforgivably passive. In both cases, official Yerevan is clearly to blame. Unlike previous similar resolutions, this one adopted by the European Parliament is of particular concern, because it has come from a structure which has in the past been relatively unbiased and understanding regarding the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Besides this, the European Parliament is one of the five governing bodies of the European Union, a structure with huge economic and political influence on Armenia, which recently joined its Eastern Partnership program. But perhaps these concerns are exaggerated; perhaps this is also one of the results of Armenia’s silent diplomacy…