YEREVAN. – The Polish-Armenian relations are traditionally very good, thus the countries do not need new agreement with EU to improve the climate of bilateral relations, Poland’s deputy foreign minister Bartosz Cichocki said in an interview with the Armenian News-NEWS.am correspondent.

“The Polish-Armenian relations are traditionally very good. Our cooperation has a very long history, especially taking into account that the Armenian minority has been present in Poland for centuries. Thus, we do not need the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between Armenia and the EU to improve the climate of bilateral relations. We however need CEPA to develop our bilateral relations in terms of economic cooperation. As CEPA contains a lot of the EU acqui communataire, its implementation will bring about the harmonization of business rules, standards and procedures. This will facilitate our economic exchange and hopefully increase its volume significantly. In the end, this may also contribute to yet closer political cooperation,” the diplomat said when asked how the new deal will affect development of relations between Poland and Armenia.

Deputy foreign minister of Poland, a country that was joined by Sweden to present the idea of Eastern Partnership program back in 2008, said his country expects the upcoming Eastern Partnership summit to show unity and present coherent vision of the Eastern Partnership shared by the EU and our partner countries.

“Participation of the invited Prime Ministers and Heads of States is a proof for that. We want to keep the language about “the European aspirations and the European choice” of Eastern Partnership countries in the Summit Declaration. We know there is contemporary no consensus in the EU about the enlargement perspective so we pragmatically do not pursue this issue and focus rather on concrete deliverables which will bring tangible results for our citizens. We are however on the position that in line with the EU Treaties each European country can apply for EU membership. The language of the Brussels Summit Declaration is important but we should first of all focus on a long-term perspective for our Eastern neighbors,” Mr. Cichocki said.

The official admits that we live in a very turbulent times and the EU has its own problems indeed. However, he adds that the EU has always developed thanks to crises and survived all of them, and the same is about the Eastern Partnership program.

“Since its beginning on 2009 Eastern Partnership was a constant crisis management – we have had armed conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine and problems with territorial integrity of all EaP countries but Belarus. Nevertheless, we were able to introduce Association Agreements with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine and to lift visa regimes for these countries. We are about to sign CEPA with Armenia, we have already started negotiation of an analogue agreement with Azerbaijan. Also Belarus signalizes its willingness to negotiate such a new agreement,” the diplomat said.

The EU is also ready for visa liberalization negotiations with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus, and it is “very much, especially given the unexpected obstacles that occurred.”

However, Polish official said they are far from being satisfied and want to go step further, as the future of the Eastern Partnership program will be mainly about implementation of commitments taken in respective sectors.

“This is why we have to find fields of sectorial cooperation which will bring the most added value and which will be accepted by all of them, regardless of the level of their ambitions in the cooperation with the EU,” Cichocki emphasized.

The sides will have to focus on extending of all kinds of mutual connections, including transport, energy, people-to-people contacts. Developing digital connections would be crucial in this regard – internet media followed especially by youth thanks to smartphones and tablets are very often the only source of alternative information in EaP countries. 

“The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) will hopefully be successfully extended on EaP countries. The European External Investment Plan (EIP) has already been launched. This enables to increase investment in transport infrastructure in EaP countries. In this regard we should also look further in Asia, for example in the context of the Belt and Road initiative. EaP countries are of crucial transit location for land connections between EU and Asia. It is in our common interest not to have bottlenecks between us.”