European Parliament President Roberta Metsola voiced her strong disagreement with the statements made by co-chair of EU-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Cooperation Committee Tural Ganjaliyev in a letter sent to Majlis speaker Sahiba Gafarova on December 20, 2022, reports Armenpress. 

The letter was published on her social networks pages by Marina Kaljurand, co-chair of EU-Armenia, EU-Azerbaijan and EU-Georgia Parliamentary Cooperation Committees of the European Parliament.

According to Azerbaijani media reports, Mr. Ganjaliyev accused the European Parliament of creating a mechanism for financing MEPs through corruption. Without providing any basis for his accusations, he said that profits from looted gold mines in Nagorno-Karabakh go into the pockets of parliamentarians who criticize Azerbaijan's actions. He also shared on Twitter an article containing direct personal attacks on Marina Kaljurand, co-chair of the EU-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Cooperation Committee in the European Parliament, falsely accusing her of corruption, Roberta Metsola wrote.

At the same time, the President of the European Parliament expressed readiness to continue to build good relations with the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan in a spirit of mutual respect.

Roberta Metsola wrote in a letter sent to Majlis Speaker Gafarova of Azerbaijan that they can and often do include constructive criticism, which should, however, be based on facts and not on baseless and slanderous allegations. For this reason, Metsola orged Gafarova to take all possible steps to avoid the recurrence of such incidents in the future.