European expert: no reason to punish Armenia for its choice

YEREVAN, January 29. /ARKA/. The European Union will not tighten its policy toward Yerevan for Armenia’s decision to join the Customs Union, Erika Lerner, member of Association of European Center of Meetings between East and West, said in an online interview with Novosti-Armenia.  

She said it would be unreasonable to punish Armenia for its decision. If the European Union wants to show that Armenia made mistake by choosing Eurasian integration, it will do the opposite – it will liberalize relations with Armenia.

In her words, the process has already begun – Poland has opened its labor market for Armenian citizens. 

Lerner thinks that this step will be followed by other steps, but finds it difficult to predict what effect this will produce. She said that it should be taken into account that in the future the European Union will be not able to separate Armenia from the Customs Union, since this will be an integrated customs territory.  

In early September, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, made a joint statement, according to which Armenia has decided to join the Customs Union and to take part in formation of the Eurasian Union in the future.  

The announcement came as Armenia was poised to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union aimed at making European Union’s ties with Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova and Georgia closer.

Joint news conferences of international experts are held as part of the project aimed at expanding Armenians and Azerbaijanis’ knowledge about each other and establishing mutual trust through first-hand information. The project is being implemented by the Regional Studies Center (Armenia) and the Peace and the Institute for Peace and Democracy (Azerbaijan). --0---