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A regular cabinet meeting chaired by Nikol Pashinyan took place on Thursday, the prime minister's office reported.

Pashinyan noted that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations with a number of countries.

"In this connection, you know, my visit to the Russian Federation is scheduled for April. We are now in the preparatory phase of that visit. We must do everything possible to ensure that the visit also takes place at a high level and rich in content,” he said.

Referring to his working visit to France on March 8-9, Nikol Pashinyan assessed it as successful, noting, “Tonight our delegation returned from the French capital, where we participated in the Armenian-French forum organized jointly with the French government, dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries. I think now we, based also on that conference, should give a new impetus to the economic cooperation between France and Armenia, and not only that."

The prime minister said that in addition to Armenia-France relations, a wide range of issues were discussed during the visit.

Pashinyan also referred to the 2022 report on democracy published by the Varieties of Democracy Institute.

"A very important fact has been recorded for Armenia. For the first time in the history of our country, the Republic of Armenia is defined not by the term "electoral authoritarianism", but by "electoral democracy". This means that in terms of democracy there has been a change in the classification of the Republic of Armenia. That is, even after the non-violent, velvet, popular revolution of 2018, this organization continued to view Armenia as a country with an authoritarian electoral system. The meaning of this was that there was an authoritarian system that, in fact, used the electoral process to ensure its own reproduction. What is the essence of this new definition? The essence of this new definition is that the authorities are formed through elections, that is, elections are not an instrument of reproduction of power, but elections are an instrument of power formation," he said.

"To put it very simply, we can state that the most recent example, with the early parliamentary elections in Armenia in 2021, the Republic of Armenia entered, relatively speaking, the top league of democracies... Of course, this does not mean that democracy in our country is perfect or flawless, just by the sum of different episodes we got in such a category, which, I think, is worth mentioning. Of course, this does not mean that democracy in our country is perfect, just based on different episodes we received that classification, which, I think, is worth mentioning. And we must emphasize once again that democracy is a priority for us. And our Government is committed to establishing and developing democratic institutions in the Republic of Armenia. First of all, I would like to congratulate us on the change of this classification; I would like to draw our attention to two circumstances. We must try to occupy higher places in that top league every year. Secondly, we must be able to capitalize these indicators to serve the issues on the agenda of the Republic of Armenia," Pashinyan noted.