YEREVAN. – From our perspective, the ratification of CEPA [Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement] is proceeding quite normal.

Ambassador Piotr Świtalski, Head of the Delegation of the European Union (EU) to Armenia, told the aforementioned in an interview with Mediamax news agency.

In his words, so far, almost one third of the EU Member States have ratified the agreement, and in the other countries the ratification process is quite advanced.

“We could speak about the ratification with other countries, who concluded even more ambitious agreements with the European Union (Georgia, Moldova),” Świtalski added. “Normally it takes 2-2.5 years to ratify an agreement by all the Member States. What we have now is quite a normal picture.

“What is more important, there are no political signals from any of the Member States indicating to possible political and other complications. The elections to European Parliament, scheduled to be held this year, are a very important event, but let me remind that the European Parliament had already given its consent and it is overwhelming - more than 500 positive votes and only 50 negatives. There is no requirement for any action of the European Parliament on CEPA. Therefore, we should proceed with the implementation, because 80 percent of the provisions of CEPA are already in force.”

And when asked to comment on the fact that a Armen Ashotyan, a former MP from the ex-ruling Republican Party of Armenia, quoting his sources in Brussels, had said that the EU was not happy with the Roadmap draft presented by the Armenian side, the EU diplomat stated as follows, in particular:

“The Armenian government has submitted a draft Roadmap to the European Union. It is now being studied in Brussels. We promised to provide our comments by the end of January. What I can say is that the document prepared by the Armenian government is very impressive. It is more than 100 pages with 300 practical steps which the government believes should be taken.

“The inter-ministerial commission is working and the ministries are seriously thinking about how to carry out the corresponding provisions from CEPA.

“CEPA implementation will be a very complex endeavor. The European Union have assigned several million euros by now to help the Armenian government to implement the agreement. After the events of April and May last year, we are receiving, very committing declarations from the new government that they want to take it very seriously and believe that CEPA constitutes a good framework for reforms.

“We are now in very close cooperation with the Armenian government to have a result, a really good and realistic, but at the same time ambitious Roadmap. It will be adopted later this year, probably in early spring, but even now we are ready to provide the necessary assistance.”