Fate of Armenia’s application to EU will be negative, says political scientist 

Speaking with Alpha News, Russian political scientist Sergey Stankevich commented on Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly Alen Simonyan’s statement that Armenia is ready to become a candidate for EU membership.

According to the expert, the EU will not seriously consider anything like this now.

“If there is such an intention to apply, why not. But I assume that the fate of this application will be negative because the European Union is not at all what it was many years ago. The EU is not at all inclined towards expansion, especially conflictual expansion. Armenia has not yet overcome its state of conflict. In my outside expert opinion, the main priority now for Armenia is to end the conflict situation and find an image of the future that would not provoke new conflicts. This is the primary task.

When there is a stable, peaceful country that clearly understands its place in the world, it can fully apply for membership in any alliance. Now, from my point of view, the EU will not seriously consider anything like this. Not to mention the fact that the EU itself is now experiencing a rather important EU crisis,” Stankevich said.

According to the political scientist, membership in the European Union does not exclude normal relations with Russia.

“We can discuss all this, but there is no need to bring in a new conflict with Russia; this is pure speculation. Membership in the European Union does not at all exclude normal relations with Russia. This is not NATO. For example, Hungary is a member of the European Union, and this does not bother Russia in any way. Russia is building nuclear power plants there. When these are military blocs, you need to choose, but if these are some economic unions, why not,” Stankevich noted.

According to the expert, there will be no encouraging gestures from the EU.

“There will now be a complete change of team in the EU. There will be elections to the European Parliament in June, after which the entire leadership of the European Union will change. So, if I were Armenia, I would at least wait until the new leadership of the European Union came. It is possible that there will be a significant shift to the right, and right-wing parties in Europe are not at all inclined to further expansion. They have already expanded so much that they don’t know what to do with this staff,” Stankevich concluded.