Armen Ashtoyan on the Final Declaration Adopted in China

It is noteworthy that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's visit to China and, specifically, Armenia's application to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), once again bursts the bubble inflated by the regime regarding EU membership. This was stated by Armen Ashtoyan, Vice President of the Republican Party of Armenia, on his Facebook page.

"Yes, at this stage, there are no formal legal barriers for simultaneous membership in the EU and SCO, unlike in the case of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). However, from the perspective of realpolitik, the vectors towards Brussels and Beijing are contradictory. Incidentally, the justifications given by Pashinyan's administration for applying for full SCO membership, announced on August 16, were either ignorant or manipulative, claiming that the SCO intends to eliminate the statuses of observer or associate member. In reality, the final declaration adopted yesterday in China has merely unified those two statuses and thus devalued the benefits expected by Brussels for Pashinyan's administration.

Furthermore, the question of why that same declaration, when addressing other regions from Afghanistan to Gaza, did not mention the South Caucasus and the Armenian-Azerbaijani process, is a topic for separate analysis," he wrote.