Ambassador: The European Union will not provide Armenia with the security guarantees that NATO provides to its members

ArmInfo. The cliché that Armenia is moving toward the West should be avoided. Former Belgian Foreign Ministry official, Ambassador Raoul Delcorde, stated this at the ARPI forum.

"I would say that Armenia, by developing relations with the EU, is diversifying its dependencies. Let's be honest, the European Union will not provide Armenia with the security guarantees that NATO provides to its members. The EU can contribute to greater resilience, but it cannot itself be a guarantor of security; this must be clearly understood," the ambassador added.

Raoul Delcorde noted that the EU supports Armenia's efforts to increase its resilience. "Instead, Armenia offers the EU something no less valuable: Armenia is a testing ground for whether European geopolitical influence can be exerted without devolving into conventional sphere-of-influence politics. If this experiment is successful, it will mark a new stage in European diplomacy." This is the most interesting development: Europe's influence may not lie in dictating to small states where to go, but in giving them a choice in how to achieve all of this," the former diplomat said.