“The EU respects Armenia’s sovereign rights on Customs Union accession,” said Traian Hristea, Head of EU Delegation to Armenia, today, at the conference on “From Warsaw to Vilnius: at the crossroads – Armenia and Georgia”. Continuing, he said. “EU will continue supporting Armenia in the fields that are focused on ensuring human rights and fundamental freedoms, with regard to which there are some drawbacks in terms of implementation of legislative initiatives. EU remains Armenia’s cooperating organization, and after Vilnius we will try to find ways of cooperation that will be consistent with the directions of Armenia’s foreign policy.”
The Eastern Partnership Roadmap 2012-2013 monitoring reports for Armenia and Georgia were presented. Executive Director of “Transparency International” Anti-Corruption Center Varuzhan Hoktanyan referred to electoral standards, “Armenia is among the countries where there is a systemic corruption, and it was logical that the political corruption will emerge during the elections. Abuse of administrative resources by the ruling political force is the main corruption manifestation during elections. During the last elections in Armenia, we were witnesses of these manifestations with some variation differences.”
OSF-Armenia Executive Director, Larisa Minasyan, said, “We will try to show that the defect of democracy and non establishment of institutions give rise and great opportunity to pressures, and as a result of conceding, decisions are made, which we witnessed when the direction was such dramatically changed”. Aravot.am asked the representative of Open Society-Georgia Foundation, Vano Chkhikvadze, how he assesses Ukraine’s decision of not signing the EU agreement. He replied, “Viewing from Georgia’s standpoint, this is a very disappointing decision. Ukraine’s example may serve a bad example. Russia’s pressure is obvious here. We have no guarantee that Georgia or Moldova would not be the next. Georgia is the only country in the South Caucasus, which is still consistent to its decision to go to the EU, which is pretty hard. As for Armenia’s membership to the Customs Union, then it’s your government’s decision. But, here, Europeanization of the region becomes more complicated.”
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Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
