ArmInfo. The European Parliament will hold the last vote on July 4 on the issue of approving the agreement with Armenia on a comprehensive and expanded partnership. On this June 18 at a press conference in Yerevan, said the head of the Committee on Foreign Policy of the European Parliament David McAllister.
At the same time, he expressed the conviction that the agreement, without doubt, by a majority of votes will be accepted. "The ratification of this framework agreement is only the beginning, and its successful implementation is important from the point of view of further modernization of Armenia." The successful implementation of the agreement will attract investment from the EU, help stimulate trade with the EU, and fix concrete results. "The EU is here to draw a helping hand, we provide financial and technical assistance, reflected in the growing ambition in the relations between Armenia and the EU," the MEP said. At the same time, he added that the EU is guided by certain conditions, in particular concrete results in the implementation of reforms and their effectiveness.
He also noted that from the first of June this year the partial implementation of the agreement began, which also does not interfere with Armenia's cooperation with other partners. At the same time, McAllister expressed the conviction that the document is beneficial to Armenia and the EU. "I do not see any serious problems in the issue of ratification of the agreement," he said.
In his turn, the head of the EU delegation to Armenia Piotr Switalski stressed that they did not receive any signals that the process of ratification of the agreement on the part of the EU member states is delayed. He noted that each country has its own internal state processes, but the process is moving quite dynamically, and the number of countries that have ratified the agreement is growing dynamically. "We are confident that the process will be successfully completed, but for the time being, 80% of the agreement has already entered into a provisional force and started to be applied," concluded Switalski.
The framework agreement on comprehensive and expanded partnership between Armenia and the EU was signed on November 24 in Brussels. The Armenian parliament in April 2018 unanimously ratified the agreement. On the part of the EU member states it has already been ratified by Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Bulgaria. Since June 1 of this year, a temporary application of the framework agreement has begun.