The Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting will take place in Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan, on August 6-7:
The agenda includes a wide range of issues related to the development of Eurasian integration, industrial cooperation, technological and digital transformations, as well as customs regulation and economic stability.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will also participate in the meeting, where he has recently expressed strong and concerning assessments regarding the organization's activities during a press briefing.
Specifically, addressing the obstacles and restrictions on the export of Armenian goods, Pashinyan stated:
“The EAEU is a platform where I will raise all the issues related to our agenda. I will say what I said in the briefing: I said that the EAEU is paralyzed. If the EAEU agreement does not work, then the EAEU does not work. And the EAEU is de facto in a paralyzed state, and there are trends indicating that this paralysis is deepening. If this issue is not resolved quickly, I am one hundred percent confident that the Republic of Armenia will overcome this problem, while the EAEU will not.”
Pashinyan warned that if these issues are not resolved quickly, it could mark “the beginning of the end for the EAEU,” while emphasizing that he is going to Cholpon-Ata to utilize the EAEU platform and raise all the issues on the Armenian agenda.
This will be the third time Pashinyan discusses this topic with his colleagues. However, the approaches expected at the upcoming meeting in Cholpon-Ata will once again face serious resistance, which is due to several key factors:
The EAEU Intergovernmental Council is primarily a platform for economic, trade, and technical regulations. In the case of Armenia, the economic restrictions and obstacles have effectively taken on a political subtext or become a lever for achieving geopolitical concessions, meaning they are a response to Armenia's foreign policy, as Russia does not separate economic and political relations.
