Recently, during the debate on Armenia’s joining the Customs Union organized by the “Partnership for Open Society” initiative, Director of the “European Research Center” Artur Ghazinyan expressed an opinion that Armenia will lose its sovereignty in the procedural formalities of customs tariffs.
“Aravot” asked Mr. Ghazinyan what opinion he has regarding the statement of the advisor to the President of Russia Sergey Glazyev, according to which, Armenia will lose its sovereignty not in the Customs Union, but in the European Union. Mr. Glazyev has particularly said, “Armenia was offered to practically become the EU’s carriage with discrimination conditions as in the case of Ukraine, by giving all rights of making decisions to Brussels, and afterwards just carrying out the instructions of Brussels against the functions, which we had attributed to the Customs Union. In other words, it were not us to push Armenia towards making a decision to join the Customs Union, but the European Union, with its stubborn desire to deprive Armenia from its sovereignty.”
“It is a political speculation, it is speculated, it pursues the goal to show that the former path chosen by you, from which you declined in favor of our offered Customs Union, it gives you more autonomy than what you were going to sign,” said Mr. Ghazinyan regarding the opinion expressed by the advisor to the President of Russia.
According to the director of “Center for European Studies”, should we had signed the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area agreement, and regulated the issue of customs duties and quantitative restrictions on some products or other similar payments through this agreement, the decision was to be made by the government of Armenia. “It were us, along with them, to decide what kind of custom duties to set for a given product. But, for the Customs Union, we transfer the right to make a decision to Commission of the Customs Union.”
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To the observation of “Aravot” that the CU countries have the right to a veto, and as assured by Glazyev the decisions would be made based on the principle of consensus, and we have the opportunity to boycott the decision that are not beneficial to us, Mr. Ghazinyan said, “Yes, formally, we have the right to a veto, legally, yes, we can make use of the right to the veto, in practice, I do not know.”
To our question that if the contract is signed and we enter into CU, whether Armenia will have the opportunity in the future to withdraw from CU at any time, or there will be pressures again, as it happened during the membership, Mr. Ghazinyan said these pressures were only on the level of the conversations, there are no evidences. “But if we succeed to become a member of the Customs Union, ultimately, despite all available obstacles and problems, we become a CU member and participate in the process of formation of the Eurasian Union, which is already a political institution, withdrawal will be approximately like withdrawal from the Soviet Union. Given the fact that we have the Russian military base in Armenia. ”
As observed by Mr. Ghazinyan, Armenia still has the chance not to join the Customs Union, and as the expert said on the background of recent statements (meaning the statements of presidents of Belarus and Kazakhstan saying that they should first think whether Armenia can enter into the CU with the existence of unresolved issue of Karabakh – N.B.), there is a hope to avoid joining the CU. “There are two planes where we can calculate that there will be problems that Armenia will not join the Customs Union. First, there are problems within the Customs Union that Kazakhstan and Belarus, with their bilateral relations with Azerbaijan and in the presence of the Nagorno-Karabakh unresolved conflict, will not allow Armenia’s entry into the Customs Union. The second is more practical and is inside Armenia. Everything depends on us. We can never cherish a hope that, for example, Nazarbayev and Lukashenko will not allow Putin to include us into the Customs Union, it would be naïve. The entire resource is inside.”
And as for which our internal resources are, or what needs to be done to fail entering into the CU, or we need to hold a referendum, and it may turn out that the majority of the society prefers the Customs Union, Mr. Ghazinyan said that the Constitution does not allow to conduct a referendum, but there are other mechanisms.
Artur Ghazinyan thinks that first we need to change the correlation of political forces, because, according to the expert, the current correlation of political forces does not reflect the real sentiments. “Today, we see that there are, for example, at least 35-40 % people who desire not to join the CU, or a desire to join the European civilization, and there is 60 % who do not feel the desire to both. In other words, the current political image at the parliament, at least the representation ratio of the forces, does not reflect what there is in the society, in the people. Hence, we need to get prepared for 2017-2018 elections to better reflect the public moods.” But, whether or not we will be a member of the Customs Union by 2017, or whether it would be not too late, Mr. Ghazinyan expressed skepticism in response to our question, saying that before the new elections Armenia will have something real with any union.
“Believe me… The haste that is going on is a normal process. And, the Vilnius summit on November is not the last, it will also take 2 years for Riga, and it is not necessary to present catastrophic scenarios that this is the end, that we do not have Armenia any more, for Heaven’s sake. This is a touchstone for the Constitutional Court, this is not a choice, this is not the right to free education, this is not “ArmenTel’s” Monopoly, this is the issue of independence, statehood and sovereignty, and state existence. This is the issue of commitment towards future generations, we must be careful in choosing a union.”
Nelly Babayan
