Italy and Armenia have all the necessary preconditions to satiate their trade and economic relations with new content. This is what Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan stated in his statement for the mass media in Rome today, summing up the results of his talks with Prime Minister of Italy Giuseppe Conte.

The Prime Minister said Armenia highly appreciates the decision that the Chamber of Deputies of Italy took to recognize the Armenian Genocide in April of this year and added that Italy reaffirmed its loyalty to universal values.

Pashinyan also said he and his Italian counterpart were highly focused on trade and economic relations. “I recorded the fact that, at this moment, Italy is Armenia’s second partner for trade and economy in the European Union. I informed my counterpart about the Armenian-Italian business forum that was held in Milan, the center for finance, economy and industry in Italy. We highly appreciated the work of the Armenian-Italian Intergovernmental Commission and expressed confidence that together we will be able to hold the second session in Yerevan in a short amount of time.”

The Prime Minister said he and his Italian counterpart had also touched upon the opportunities for the growth of tourism and had attached importance to the Rome-Yerevan and Milan-Yerevan direct flights to be launched by Ryanair starting from January 2020, which will highly contribute to the intensification of tourism and business relations.

Nikol Pashinyan highly appreciated Italy’s support to the development of the EU-Armenia partnership, including the launch of talks over visa liberalization. He stated that they had also touched upon the current state of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “I reaffirmed Armenia’s willingness to continue the work for a peaceful settlement of the conflict through the mediated efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs. We also touched upon Armenia’s peacekeeping mission under the Italian command of the UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon.”

Pashinyan emphasized that they had also exchanged views on the Syrian crisis and expressed concern about the Turkish army’s invasion of the northern and eastern regions of Syria.