“Rules of the game are not for everyone”
On December 7, Chairperson of the NA Standing Committee on European Integration Naira Zohrabyan met with Estonia's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Armenia Thomas Luk (seat in Tbilisi).
During the meeting, Mrs. Zohrabyan attached importance to the agreement on cooperation for European integration signed by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Estonia and Armenia and mentioned that it is necessary to make the inter-parliamentary cooperation more dynamic in order to apply the flexible levers of parliamentary diplomacy in a more efficient manner. The chairperson of the committee also attached importance to the fact that Estonia has already taken out the visa regime for persons with diplomatic passports and she expressed hope that the general negotiations for facilitating the visa regime with the EU will launch by the end of the year.
Touching upon the "Eastern Partnership" and attaching importance to the bilateral and multilateral format of partnership, Mrs. Zohrabyan mentioned that unfortunately, the rules of the game don't work for all countries of the "Eastern Partnership".
Naira Zohrabyan mentioned that the official Azerbaijan refuses to cooperate with Armenia in the format of partnership and underlined Aliyev's recent announcement on isolating Armenia from all projects in the region. The chairperson of the committee expressed uncertainty that the EU is still not responding to Azerbaijan's destructive steps and working style.
The sides also discussed the NKR conflict. In that context, the chairperson of the committee attached importance to the implementation of the EU's humanitarian projects in the NKR and mentioned that being unrecognized doesn't deprive the people of Artsakh from the fundamental human rights. Mrs. Zohrabyan underlined that in accordance with the reports of various international organizations, Nagorno-Karabakh has higher indicators than many countries in the region in terms of human rights and democracy.
During the meeting, the sides also discussed other issues of bilateral interest, as reported by the Department of Information and Public Relations of the RA National Assembly.
