YEREVAN. – The new deal signed between Armenia and the European Union would not be a crucial change but an important message on both the EU and Armenia’s flexibility, nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Mr. Balázs Jarábik believes.

Armenia and the European Union have signed the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement   on Friday following the Eastern Partnership summit.

The new deal is sides’ wish to find a common approach toward Armenia’s EU integration or at least getting closer to the EU by legal standards.

“It is also showing that out of the two Eurasia member states Armenia is much closer to the EU as Belarus does not even have a legal base of its relations, not even offered one at this stage,” he said in an e-mail inquiry to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The analyst emphasized that the expectations that the Eastern Partnership (EaP) summit will be leading toward membership are crashed after the Dutch referendum on Ukraine’s Association Agreement in 2016.

“This was a kind of official confirmation and the end of the debate that the EU – due to its internal cohesion issues but also due to the difficult transition of the region as well as the role of Russia – will be capable to move toward integration quickly. At the same time the EaP is a framework and much depends on partner countries how to fill the framework. Particularly those countries not having a full fledge Association Agreement can think about other ways and means of cooperation within the EaP as policy framework,” he said.