Consequences of Armenia leaving the EAEU could be even more catastrophic: Alexander Semchenko

Alexander Semchenko, a political analyst, commented to Alpha News on the report on the consequences of Armenia’s possible withdrawal from the Eurasian Economic Union. In his view, the document’s estimates of possible economic losses may prove overly optimistic, and closer ties with the EU do not guarantee Armenia comparable benefits and could cost it the markets of EAEU countries.

“The report that was released, and the figures cited in it, may in fact be very, very optimistic. The consequences for Armenia of leaving this community could be even more catastrophic. Of course, the Armenian people will be told something completely different – about European integration and European prospects. We have seen all this before with Ukraine. They will hold up the leading EU countries as examples, while keeping quiet about the fact that the wealth of the Netherlands, France or Belgium is largely built on plundering other states. But Armenia has no Indonesia that it could plunder for trillions of dollars and use those funds to develop its own economy, as the Netherlands, for example, did,” Semchenko said.

According to the analyst, European integration does not guarantee Armenia a higher standard of living or access to EU markets on favorable terms, while leaving the EAEU could deprive the country of important trading partners and create additional political risks.

“As for the EU, I want to stress that it also has poor countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria. The standard of living in these countries is, to put it mildly, very low. And other Eastern European states are not far ahead of them. So Armenia will gain nothing from integration with the EU. It will lose the Russian market, the Belarusian and Kazakh markets, and so on – that is, the markets of the Eurasian Economic Union. On top of that, Armenia will be used politically, and that could have very negative consequences for it. After all, its safety margin is much smaller than Ukraine’s,” the analyst concluded.