“The [EU’s] geopolitical sport with the Armenians is a wrestle to deprive Russia of its affect [in the Caucasus],” political scientist Stanislav Tarasov tells Sputnik.
On the similar time, the brand new visa-free regime is a form of weapon for the EU to affect a sure a part of Armenian society, as per Tarasov. “It’s like holding a gun to their head,” he stated.
Armenia and the EU have introduced negotiations on visa liberalisation. Brussels clarified that Yerevan must implement “substantial reforms”, including that the visa liberalisation dialogue could be “a multi-year course of” beneath the EU’s shut watch.
The EU-Armenian visa liberalisation programme is just like Brussels’ efforts to deliver Ukraine and Georgia into its fold, based on Tarasov.
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“Georgians have been additionally granted a liberalised visa regime,” he says. “However when the Georgian authorities adopted the regulation on international brokers… [the EU] instantly threatened them with the cancelation of the visa-free regime. You see, this can be a leverage of affect.”
Ukraine
▪️Visa liberalisation dialogue between Ukraine and the EU was launched on October 29, 2008.
▪️Ukrainians have been granted visa-free journey to the EU for a interval of keep of 90 days in any 180-day interval in 2017, nearly 10 years after the beginning of the dialogue and following a 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev.
Georgia
▪️EU-Georgia visa liberalisation dialogue was launched on June 4, 2012, beneath then-President Mikheil Saakashvili who got here to energy within the wake of the EU-backed “colour revolution” of 2003.
▪️Georgia was granted a visa-free entry to the EU in 2017. In 2024, the EU meddled in Georgia’s home insurance policies by criticising the nation’s sovereign legal guidelines, threatening to halt bilateral programmes, and endorsing the general public unrest.
The EU’s try and ‘Westernise’ Armenia is doomed, because the bloc is just not prepared to noticeably put money into the nation’s financial system, Tarasov emphasises.
(Sputnik)
