Armenia dreams of being part of the European Union. Erevan’s Parliament has approved a bill that gives the green light to start the request for the candidacy of the Caucasian country to adherence to the blockade. The text, proposed by the government at the beginning of the year, was adopted in the second and last reading with 64 votes in favor, those of the deputies of the party in government, and seven against.
As a consequence of this vote, the Armenian government is now invited to start the process of adhesion to the EU. “The decision was made,” said the president of Parliament Alen Simonyan after the vote, which had the full support of the only deputies of the government party, the civil contract. The supporters of the request affirm that the aim is “to make Armenia a safe, protected, developed and prosperous country”.
The Azerbaijan problem
A possible adhesion path will not be easy. The mountainous country of 2.7 million inhabitants, without outlet on the sea, does not border with the union and since the late 1980s it is in conflict with Azerbaijan, one of the main gas suppliers of the European States.
In 2023, Azerbaijan launched a lightning of lightning to resume control of the Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist region that was managed for more than three decades by its Armenian ethnic majority with the support of Erevan, forcing its population to leave.
The break with Russia
The times for a possible adhesion will be long, but for Armenia to start this path it would then mean above all to definitively break the traditional alliance with the Russia of Vladimir Putin and the abandonment of the Eurasian economic union (EEE), of which it is part of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Kyrgyzistan, being impossible to contemporary adhesion to the two blocks.
In recent years, Armenia has deepened the ties with the West at the expense of traditionally tight relationships with Moscow, accused of not having defended her from the long -standing rival Azerbaijan.
Four days after the start of the anzerbaijan offensive in 2023, the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared to the nation in a television speech that Erevan’s security alliances were “ineffective” and “insufficient”. In February 2024 the premier then frozen the participation of the nation in the organization of the Russian collective security treaty, a defense group of several ex-Soviet states similar to NATO.
Erevan also joined the International Criminal Court, against the will of Moscow, a move that would force the country to arrest Putin in case of visit. Finally, Erevan started talks for the liberalization of visas with the European Union in September 2024 and deepened the bonds of defense with France. Now he wants to make the final leap and adhere completely to the EU.
Not the first ex -Soviet country
Armenia would not be the first ex -Soviet country to enter the block. Three states are already part of this which were once part of the USSR: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
