Karen Bekaryan: Domestic political developments ‘heavy blow’ to EU-Armenia relations – 168 Zham 

In an interview with 168 Zham, Karen Bekaryan, a former parliament member and a political analyst, elaborated on the EU-Armenia agenda and the processes surrounding Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) signed in Brussels in 2017. Highlighting the recent developments in the country as a serious impediment, the analyst expressed his concerns that they “may deliver a heavy blow” to the EU-Armenia relations, impacting the perceptions by European partners in a negative light.  

Mr Bekaryan, exactly two years ago - on November 24, 2017 - the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement was signed in Brussels, marking practically the first serious achievement in the EU-Armenia relations after the failure of the Association Agreeement. The deal now being in a phase of "partial enactment", to what extent do you think Armenia’s relations with the EU have changed in substantial terms after the signing?  

The first change deserving attention is, certainly, in a broad context. A widely promising arrangement has been fixed - as a matter of fact - addressing all the specters of life and thereby ensuring a tremendously high outcome for Armenia in the European integration process. The second essential component, which received quite positive evaluation by all the foreign partners, was Armenia’s ability to demonstrate a good example that integration processes, for example, can be complimentary in nature. That’s to say, being an EAEU member state, Armenia signed an agreement with the EU promsing a sectoral diversity and opportunities of deepening [the partnership] with a priority focus on a variety of tasks. This actually demonstrated how integration processes can be replenished without giving rise to contradiciations and conflicts between integration unions. This, of course, was first of all a major political dividend for the Republic of Armenia given especially the situation with the other partners on the Eastern Partnership [EaP] platform.  Consequently, it was Armenia’s first foreign policy achievement over the past years - as we need to consider several constituent parts after the signing. The first, as you remember, is that the agreement needs to be ratified by all the EU member states to enter into the phase of "full implementation", i.e. – to become fully effective. That process is now underway; it is still unfinished.

Do you find the paces satisfying?

To say that the dynamics is the most positive and desired isn't true of course. Yet we cannot insist on artificial obstacles either. We are simply dealing with countries with different domestic procedures, and that process is still going on. A considerably large part of the agreement – even under conditions of being unratified and the approval by the Euopean Parliament and ratification by the National Assembly of Armenia being in place – the third task here dealt with the effective enactmenet and implementation of the part which was already effective. Opinions may very largely in this case – ranging from [evaluations of the document as] efficient to [theses insisting on its] extreme inefficiency.  Yet a large part of the evaluations, I assure you, will be subjective. If you desire to have an objective picture, a large-scale research needs to be carried out in each of the assigned trends to see [the difference between] what we had before the agreement['s signing] and what what we have now. I would like to point out also to another important factor. An agreement is one thing and the perception by your partners – namely the EU – about your country – absolutely another. Without any available research, any kind of evaluation related [to the process] contains a subjective element because that particular component is increasingly important especially in the case of the EU. The EU is an institution anchored on values – notwithstanding the interests and the great experience. With the value-based relations not being torpedoed at all, the chances for effective relations are essentially low indeed. We are facing a rather heavy and bad situation in this case, namely in the light of recent developments in Armenia, which directly run counter to [the principle] of rule of law. etc. – starting from the separation of powers and [actions taken] against the judges, ending with the possible launch of the institution of political prisoners.

If you push your partner to work in the domain of interests – setting aside the values – that’s a big blow to the relations given that partners collaborating in the domain of values are perceivable, predictable and trustworthy, and hence – likely to use a resource potentially contributing to your development and dynamic instead of receiving what they actually expect you to give to them. These are  very different concepts. And we are having a rather complicated situation in this respect.

The plans for launching the visa liberalization dialogue have been under discussion for two years now. Why is the process being dragged on?

We have a zero result when it comes to the start of the visa liberalization talks, i.e. – even if a slight progress has been observed in those negotiations, we have practically no outcome in terms of pubicity and formalization. 

It is difficult to say with certainty why the process of those negotiations is not open now. We can conclude that the EU isn't content with the result from the countries with which it proceeded to a liberalization deal; hence, it sees certain risks in case of expanding the process. The second component deals, in my view, with the domestic political situation – its intensity and atmosphere – as they are concerned about the consequences in case of opting for liberalization in the current state of affairs. That's to say, with groups in the domain of a normal debate pressure mechanisms are normally treated as a common practices, whereas an open [process] may potentially contribute to an increasing influx. The European Union does, I think, take this into consideration, following the situation. The third component deals with predictability of the government, its steps, actions, etc. Also the issue of trust, partnership, abidance by arrangements [as opposed to reliance on populism] fits into the predictability domain in this case. And it is hard indeed to predict the underlying context given that the negotiations are going on in a closed regime.