YEREVAN. – Armenia has not lost the European direction, former opposition bloc member Davit Shahnazaryan said.

He believes Armenia can have “higher level relationship with EU” than Azerbaijan and Belarus.

At the same time he added, the degree of European integration will certainly be lower than that in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – the countries that are going to initial the Association Agreement during the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius this November.

“Armenia must find an alternative format of a document which would necessarily contain the word ‘association’,” Shahnazaryan said during the discussion on Armenia’s foreign policy that took place in Yerevan on Thursday.

The politician believes the statement of Swedish FM Carl Bildt in connection with the decision to join the Customs Union can be called emotional.

“I think that Armenia has certain opportunities, and I hope the authorities will do everything that depends on them to sign a document about the association, even if it has a lower status than envisaged previously,” he concluded.

As a result of the talks that were held on September 3 in Moscow between Armenian and Russian Presidents Serzh Sargsyan and Vladimir Putin, Sargsyan announced that Armenia plans to join the Customs Union and subsequently engage in the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union.