M2ZiNmMzYlM7CzheYgFvRnhTbAQkWGEQL0t0T2JJewIiW3xdYhwkXj8bKx0iVCpALxkvGj1UPV51CD4EYgx8HT4APR0hGzQdPwQsCClVfQA-D3Zaf0pgCjheKkB5HigKd1F6VChXfVBjCH0LL0wuAWJdbBA — Miłosz Manasterski

Armenia & Karabakh International Opinion Armenian Foreign Policy Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)European Union

A Fast Track for Armenia, Now!

October 22, 2026

by

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

31

By Miłosz Manasterski

Special to the Mirror-Spectator

Brussels has shown it can move fast: Canada has just been offered a status found in no EU treaty. Armenia has lived through two wars over Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s 2023 offensive and the exodus that followed. Yet Brussels is still talking to Yerevan mainly in terms of summits and action plans. If any country has earned a fast track, it is Armenia.

In her State of the Union address on September 16, Ursula von der Leyen told MEPs: “I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU.” According to a senior Canadian official, Ottawa also wants Canadians to be able to live and work in Europe without visas.

Whether the offers to Ottawa and Kyiv are wise is a fair debate. What they prove is simpler: in Brussels, speed is a political choice.

Ukraine applied for membership four days after Russia’s full-scale invasion and received candidate status less than four months later. Still at war, it has opened only two of its six negotiating clusters. Yet EU officials this year considered a model informally dubbed “reverse enlargement”, under which a candidate could join before acquiring full membership rights. Most capitals later rejected it.

The Commission presented a visa liberalization action plan only in November 2025; Yerevan’s own goal is visa-free travel by 2029. On August 24, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Armenia would begin the process of submitting a formal membership application “in the near future”.

Two Wars and a Choice

Armenia fought two wars over Karabakh, in 1988–1994 and in 2020. In September 2023, an Azerbaijani offensive ended the region’s de facto Armenian administration, and within a week more than 100,000 of its Armenian residents fled to Armenia, a country of about three million.

At the time, I argued in the Polish media, including on TVP Info and Polish Radio, that the EU should open its doors to refugees from Karabakh, as it had for those fleeing Ukraine. The appeal went unanswered.

Armenia has also paid for its European choice. It froze its participation in the Russian-led CSTO in 2024, and the Kremlin has warned that adopting EU standards would create “deep trade contradictions” inside the Eurasian Economic Union. In June 2026, Pashinyan’s pro-European Civil Contract won 49.7% of the vote.

Solidarity is not a competition. But Armenia should not count for less because its war was smaller than Ukraine’s and its economy poorer than Canada’s.

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Topics: Armenian Foreign Policy, Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), European Union

People: Miłosz Manasterski

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A Small Economy

Armenia’s economy grew by 7.2% in real terms in 2025, with nominal GDP of about $29 billion. Ukraine, by contrast, has roughly 37 million hectares of arable land. Bruegel estimated in 2024 that, if the rules of the 2021–2027 Common Agricultural Policy were applied to a fully integrated Ukraine, it could receive about €85 billion over a seven-year budget period.

Nor is Armenia a country at war today. Yerevan and Baku initialled a peace agreement at the White House in August 2025, though the treaty still awaits signature and ratification, and an unarmed EU civilian mission has operated on the Armenian side of the border since February 2023.

Why Armenia Matters

At the first EU–Armenia summit in May, European Council President António Costa called Armenia a “key pillar” in Europe’s links through the South Caucasus to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. With Georgia’s accession process de facto halted, and its government refusing to seek the opening of negotiations before 2028, Armenia is the South Caucasus country still moving towards Europe.

Armenia adopted Christianity as a state religion in 301 and has been a member of the Council of Europe since 2001.

Obstacles exist. Armenia remains a member of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union; as Pashinyan said in August, simultaneous membership of both blocs “is impossible”. That is precisely why speed matters. A country that would eventually have to leave one economic bloc needs clarity about the path into the other.

Now, Not in a Decade

When Yerevan applies, Brussels should answer in months, as it did for Kyiv. It should accelerate the visa-liberalization process and open EU programs and parts of the single market step by step.

Von der Leyen has shown that a door can be opened with one sentence. Armenia is already standing at it.

(Miłosz Manasterski is a Polish journalist and commentator writing on Central Europe, demography, and the political economy of European societies. He is the CEO of Agencja Informacyjna, an independent Polish news agency, and a regular political commentator for leading Polish media outlets. A former Middle East correspondent based in the United Arab Emirates, his work examines how institutions and historical memory shape the long-term future of Europe and its neighbors. He is a recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for distinguished contributions to culture and public service, and was awarded a medal under the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) framework for his work on social policy. You can read his work on Substack (miloszmanasterski.substack.com) and connect with him on LinkedIn.)

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