MP Edmon Marukyan, who returned today from the Strasbourg EU-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Forum, in the conversation with Aravot.am, said that at the Forum he presented the potentials of cooperation in the field of human rights. Detailing the findings of the Forum, Edmon noted, “The main message that I wanted to convey to our European partners was that Armenia has made serious progress in recent years in terms of human rights, of course, I am saying this in comparison, because we still have a lot of problems and we need to work in this direction, but the matter that Armenia nowadays compared with the Customs Union member states is an islet of democracy, that’s definite. Also, my main message was that we have achieved today’s progress by the support of our European partners, both expertise, financial and institutional, which has been very consistent in the last four years.
It is natural that after the statement of Armenia’s joining the Customs Union, our EU partners review their approaches towards Armenia, and it was also my message that we need to jointly cherish the achievements that we have obtained today, not letting Armenia to go regress, and that different civil society institutions of the republic of Armenia still need the support and hope that the EU will not close its doors in front of them. And the other offer was that sooner or later Armenia would be involved in the EU’s deep integration processes, consequently, it will not require many years of work and efforts for the day to come if we manage to preserve the available progress.” To the question of what suggestions were made with regard to improve human rights sector, Edmon Marukyan responded, “With regard to human rights improvement, there exists the EU Eastern Partnership ENP country progress report, I have made a reference to it of what steps must be taken, and my recommendation in this regard is to establish a Committee consists of representatives from Armenia’s Civil Society Platform and the Government, which will conduct monitoring the Armenia-EU revised partnership, which we hope that it will be at least a continuation of political and civil reforms.”
Eva HAKOBYAN
