Second Armenian President Robert Kocharyan expressed the opinion that Armenia’s joining the Eurasian Economic Union didn’t meet the country’s expectations.
 
2rd.am reports that Robert Kocharyan said this during his interview to German Deutsche Welle TV and radio company touching upon EEU integration issues a few days ago.

“The goal and intention are as follows: we are entering a large customs area which will open big opportunities for Armenian businessmen and importers. Around a year has passed but export didn’t grow, vice versa, it decreased. Turnover with Russia reduced, too. Some events radically changed the situation. Rubles decline against dollar ran counter to the Armenian authorities’ expectations. Besides, sanctions, Russian authorities’ efforts toward exchanging import etc. were added. That’s why, the Armenian business didn’t get the promised “holiday””, said Robert Kocharyan.

At the same time, it’s still early to give final assessments on EEU membership.

According to Robert Kocharyan, the Armenian authorities should be extremely active and creative to the situation and understand that “no one will give them the good life for no reason”.

“Neither Customs Union, nor EU and Association Agreement will do that. No matter what union one joins, the governance should be effective, business conditions should be effective and one should encourage the export component of the economy. Only at that time will it be possible to find the own place in the large economic space”, said the second Armenian President.

Answering the question how will Armenia-EU relations develop, Robert Kocharyan said that he wasn’t advocating the Association Agreement in the form it was supposed to be.

According to him, some provisions were sensitive in terms of geopolitics for some Armenian partners.

“I understood that the fact should be taken into consideration. Moreover, the geopolitical sensitivity would multiply as Armenia got engaged in the process together with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine which demonstrated absolutely obvious and articulated foreign policy choice (membership to the EU). Of course, the process shouldn’t have been deepened to find oneself in a different place.

Did all this spoil relations with Armenia? I think we will still have some volume of relations- reduced, not full- but some volume will still be by no means.  However, for a long time to come, we will feel the damage that was inflicted to Armenia’s reputation overnight, as a result of the radical change unexpected for Europeans and Armenian society”, said the second Armenian President.