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“Looking forward to the upcoming Summit and our cooperation beyond it Armenia remains committed to contribute to the joint efforts in the Eastern Partnership framework,” Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian noted in his speech delivered at the Eastern Partnership Ministerial meeting. The press service of Armenia’s MFA has issued the full statement, which is as follows:

“Dear Federica, dear Johannes,

Dear colleagues,

Needless to say that approaching the upcoming summit with tangible results will contribute to the future productive cooperation in the framework of the Eastern Partnership.

These past two years we have been actively working on the implementation of the provisions of the Riga Declaration and have been able to deliver in almost all mutual commitments relating to Armenia, namely joining COSME and HORIZON 2020 programs, launching negotiations on the Common Aviation Area Agreement, as well as the “Creative Europe”, that we intend to finalize soon.

There are also some pending issues that we are looking forward to deal with, including the launching of the Visa Liberalization Dialogue. We count on the clear support of the EU member states in this regard.

Within a relatively short time-frame we managed to negotiate the new Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement. The completion of the negotiations was announced by Presidents Sargsyan and Tusk in February in Brussels. The text has been initialed and we look forward to sign it at the upcoming summit.

Almost in parallel we discussed and agreed on the Partnership Priorities for 2017-2020. These two important documents will guide Armenia-EU partnership in coming years and help us to strengthen our mutually beneficial cooperation.

Dear colleagues,

I would like to once again highly appreciate the EU’s continued assistance, including through the Eastern Partnership initiative, provided to our country over the years for the effective implementation of the reform process and institutional capacity building in Armenia. We look forward to the continuation of fruitful cooperation in this regard.

The parliamentary elections held in Armenia in April were marked by unprecedented high number of international observers, who stated that the elections were well administered, fundamental freedoms were respected, and the results reflected the will of the population. These parliamentary elections had a particular importance for Armenia’s transition from semi-presidential to parliamentary system of governance.

I would like to thank the European Commission and European External Action Service for providing us with “20 deliverables for 2020” document that not only offers a good action plan for the coming years but also a new revised architecture of the Eastern Partnership, which is directly linked to the performance of the partner countries within this multilateral framework and more importantly to the political will to deliver on the shared commitments.

We also believe that the principle of differentiation offers a unique opportunity to develop a multi-track or multi-layer cooperation, thus allowing us to maintain the integrity of the partnership.”