Bringing Armenia Closer to Europe? Challenges to the EU-Armenia Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement Implementation

The Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA), inaugurated in March 2017, has breathed new life into waxed and waned EU-Armenia partnership. There is a lot of scholarship on the domestic state of affairs in Armenia and consideration of the combined effects of power transition, tough economic contexts, geopolitical fragility and other ways in which the specific ‘Armenian reality’ affects the way that EU policies are received and implemented (Kostanyan and Giragosian, 2016; Delcour, 2015; Delcour and Wolczuk, 2015; Delcour, 2018). This paper aims to build upon existing scholarship and addresses the following research question: What are the implications of the ‘velvet revolution’ for Armenia’s relations with the EU within the CEPA? The paper contends that despite the power transition, political and economic conditions underlying Armenia’s arbitrary decision to join the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and constraining country’s profound advancement towards the EU have largely remained unchanged. Therefore, the EU’s ‘competing governance provider’ Russia maintains its economic and political grip on Armenia, with its ensuing adverse effects on the EU-Armenia rapprochement, and more specifically on the effective implementation of the CEPA.