Achieve unification: Armenia will consider a draft law on EU accession in February
The Armenian parliament is ready to consider the draft law on joining the European Union in the first half of February, the country's legislative body told Izvestia. The government approved the document on January 9. At the same time, in order for the republic to join the EU, it is necessary to leave the EAEU, which will significantly hit Armenia's economy, experts say. Nevertheless, Yerevan does not intend to lose relations with Moscow, as evidenced by the visit of the country's Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan to the Russian capital. Whether the republic has chances to join the European Union and how Yerevan's relations with its partners may develop further - in the Izvestia piece.
Armenia's rapprochement with the European Union
The Armenian parliament may consider the bill on joining the European Union in the first half of February, Movses Harutyunyan, press secretary of the speaker of the legislative body Alen Simonyan, told Izvestia.
- The process is in accordance with the procedure. And it will probably be included in the agenda of plenary sittings of the next four-day session (February 11-14)," he said.
At the same time, the Armenian parliament is likely to vote for the adoption of the bill on the republic's accession to the European Union, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on January 21 following talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. "The bill adopted by the Armenian government on Armenia's accession to the European Union does not speak about any deadlines and mechanisms. This is an initiative of the civil society, organizations collected the necessary 50 thousand votes, this initiative automatically turned into a bill, and this bill will be put to a vote in the parliament," Ararat Mirzoyan said.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said earlier that the final decision on Armenia's accession to the EU can be made only through a national referendum. At the same time, the head of the Armenian government clarified that the draft law should not be perceived as an application for immediate accession to the EU. Its main goal is to indicate Armenia's readiness for practical work on rapprochement with the union.
Back in February 2024, the EU and Yerevan decided to start working on an ambitious expansion of bilateral cooperation. On January 13, 2025, a few days after the approval of the aforementioned draft law, Brussels officially decided to start a dialogue with Yerevan on visa facilitation, and the European Peace Fund announced that it would allocate €10 million in aid to Armenia.
At the same time, it should be taken into account that Armenia is a member of the EAEU, so strengthening cooperation with the European Union causes a natural reaction of Moscow. Thus, on the eve of the adoption of the bill, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk said that Russia considers the beginning of discussion of this document in Armenia as the start of the country's exit from the EAEU.
Also, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasized that it is hypothetically impossible to combine membership in the EU and the EAEU, while participation in the second association is beneficial for Armenia. "Here is one customs space, here is one zone of free movement of goods, services, people, capitals, there is another, there are other norms," he said. The authorities of the republic, however, have not yet given a clear answer to this question. In particular, the Armenian Foreign Minister said: "They say that there are contradictions there. It is not for me to judge about it. If the issue arises in such a way, it will probably be necessary to look into it".
At the same time, Armenia's trade turnover with the EAEU countries in January-August 2024 amounted to more than $9 billion, which is twice as much as the same indicator of 2023. Nikolay Silaev, a senior researcher at the Center for Caucasus and Regional Security Issues at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, tells Izvestia.
- Moreover, Armenia will have to leave the EAEU without any guarantees and deadlines for joining the EU. And I don't know how it is going to go this way for an unknown number of years, and I think that nobody in the republic knows it either," the expert explained.
Besides, Armenia simply has no chance to become a member of the EU, he said. At least because Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova already have candidate status. And it is unlikely that Armenia, which has not yet received such a status, can expect to join the Union before the issue with Tbilisi, Kiev and Kishinev is resolved.
- It is difficult to imagine a situation when all candidates will be left at the door and Armenia will be taken into the union," the expert summarized.
How Armenia's desire for the West will affect relations with Russia
The current rapprochement between Armenia and the EU is taking place against the backdrop of the complication of Russian-Armenian relations after Azerbaijan took full control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Yerevan's relations with the CSTO have cooled considerably, and in February 2024 Armenia froze its participation in the organization and refused to pay its membership fee. Moreover, the likelihood that it will return to active participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization in 2025 remains low, according to a report by Armenia's Foreign Intelligence Service. However, the country has not declared its intention to leave the CSTO, Dmitry Peskov clarified on January 23.
The republic decided to freeze because the CSTO allegedly failed to provide it with proper support and protect Nagorno-Karabakh in the conflict with Baku in 2020 and 2023. Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the sovereignty of Nagorno-Karabakh has not been recognized by any of the participants of the military bloc, including Armenia itself. By the way, in 2022, Pashinyan himself signed the Prague Statement, according to which Yerevan, in fact, recognized Baku's sovereignty over the entire territory of the former Azerbaijani SSR in the borders at the time of the collapse of the USSR, that is, with Nagorno-Karabakh as part of it. In this context, the conflict was perceived by the Russian Federation as an internal affair of Azerbaijan, which, accordingly, did not entail the launch of the mechanism on collective security.
In addition, Yerevan's relations not only with Moscow, but also with Minsk in the CSTO became more complicated after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko visited Azerbaijan and, in particular, Karabakh, which came under Baku's control. And after talks with Ilham Aliyev, he told reporters that he had discussed with the Azerbaijani leadership the possibility of winning the 2020 war with Armenia even before it began. Lukashenko also called that war a war of liberation.
In search of a new security guarantor, Yerevan has adopted a course of rapprochement not only with Brussels, but also with Washington. On January 14, the U.S. and Armenia signed a charter of strategic partnership. The Republic became the only country in the South Caucasus region with whom the United States will have such an agreement. In November, the U.S. suspended the strategic dialog with Georgia.
But it should be noted that the new agreement is more of a political nature - Washington is not going to make any serious commitments to Yerevan. The document assumes that Armenia will receive US assistance in military and economic reforms, but it does not mean direct intervention of the US army in a possible conflict. In other words, the agreement does not imply the provision of security guarantees to Armenia on the same level as, for example, between the U.S. and Israel.
It should be taken into account that two garrisons of the Russian military base have been located in Gyumri and Yerevan since 1995. According to the agreements of 2010, it will stay on the territory of the republic until 2044. Vadim Mukhanov, head of the Caucasus sector of the IMEMO RAS, believes that the trend toward cooling relations with Moscow will not only persist but also deepen, given all of Armenia's pro-Western actions.
- But so far we see the desire of the Armenian leadership to sit on several chairs at once, and Ararat Mirzoyan's visit to Moscow on January 21 confirms that Armenia is trying to smooth out the unpleasant moments that have appeared in bilateral relations," the expert says.
By the way, Mirzoyan himself also stated the importance of interaction with Moscow during the visit. "An important component of our cooperation, partnership is undoubtedly the economy, where we observe a steady positive effect, which favorably affects the development of trade relations," he said.
