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YEREVAN, MARCH 3, ARMENPRESS. The Armenia-EU talks over a comprehensive and expanded partnership framework agreement were held as result of goodwill of the two sides, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan told Euronews.
“This agreement doesn’t differ much from the previous one. In the political part there is almost no difference. Regarding the economic part, we had to avoid contradictions with our obligations towards the Eurasian Economic Union”, the President said.
According to the President, since the beginning, when talks were being held, the Armenian side was speaking about “both”. “We understood, we couldn’t have both EU association agreement and close integration with the Eurasian Economic Union, which we were striving for. The Russian side has never told us that we can’t sign such an agreement. They told us, that “you can, if you want, however in that case you have to buy energy resources on international prices”, Sargsyan said.
According to the President, it’s still early to speak about the equivalency of EU and EEU.
“It is better now to speak about the cooperation between those two systems. With our example we show that the cooperation is possible”, Sargsyan said.
Asked by the reporter what can Armenia offer to the EU, taking into account that Henrikh Mkhitaryan is of course a very good “export” precedent, the President said: “We have many famous people like Henrikh Mkhitaryan or Chess player Levon Aronian, we have Olympic Champions, however I think we can be useful for the European Union with the exports of our wonderful agricultural products, IT is also very rapidly developing in Armenia, however first of all, we can be a reliable and predictable neighbor for the EU”.
Speaking about partnership with NATO, Serzh Sargsyan said during the recent meeting with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg he invited the latter to visit Armenia to celebrate the 25th anniversary of successful cooperation.
“This partnership never hinders our cooperation with Russia within CSTO”, he said.