Armenia’s leadership wants to join the European Union and will hold a referendum for that purpose “in the near future,” parliament speaker Alen Simonian reportedly said on Wednesday.
“Our society has made a decision to be part of the European Union,” he told Latvia’s Rus.LSM news service during a visit to the Baltic state.
Simonian was the first member of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s entourage to publicly float the idea of the country’s accession to the EU in February this year amid a further deterioration of Russian-Armenian relations. Pashinian discussed it with parliament deputies from his Civil Contract party in the following days. But he has made no further public statements on the issue since then.
Pashinian’s political team brought the issue back to the political agenda last week when it held a parliamentary hearing in Yerevan featuring leaders of pro-Western fringe groups loyal to the prime minister. The latter urged the Armenian government to hold a referendum on the country’s EU membership within the next three months.
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Pointing to that hearing, Simonian said: “I think that sometime in the near future we will have this referendum and I am sure that our people will say yes.”
Armenian opposition figures have shrugged off the idea, saying that Armenia has a near-zero chance of being ever admitted to the EU. They claim that Pashinian wants to use it to mislead Armenians and trick them into endorsing his appeasement policy towards Azerbaijan. In particular, they say, Pashinian wants to combine the referendum on joining the EU with a popular vote on a new Armenian constitution demanded by Baku.
Latvian parliament speaker Daiga Mierina said after her talks with Simonian that “Armenia is on its way to the European Union” and therefore wants to leave the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
“Armenia also informed us that the Russian military is gradually leaving the country,” Rus.LSM quoted Mierina as saying.
Despite planning to eventually leave the CSTO, Pashinian’s administration has so far announced no plans to demand the closure of the Russian military base in Armenia or the withdrawal of Russian border guards deployed along the country’s frontier with Turkey and Iran. Some Russian pundits believe that it will eventually do so.
Earlier this week, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk warned that Armenia will lose tariff-free access to the Russian market and other economic privileges granted by Moscow if it does seek EU membership.
“The benefits that a country receives from proximity to Russia must also be perceived as the price we pay for our security and strategic depth,” said Overchuk. “So the arrival of some extra-regional players there would, of course, have consequences. We don’t do gifts.”
Russia accounted last year for over 35 percent of Armenia’s foreign trade, compared with the EU’s 13 percent share. It absorbed 40 percent of Armenian exports worth $8.4 billion.
Russia is also Armenia’s principal supplier of natural gas used not only by Armenian households and power plants but also most vehicles. The price of Russian gas for the country has long been set well below international market-based levels.