WARSAW — Armenia had asked the EU for technical assistance through the European Peace Facility (EPF), but has never received it, Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonyan said on Tuesday.
“The European Union, through the same mechanism, supports Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. Unfortunately, the EU turned down Yerevan’s request, citing its mediation efforts to help improve Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, as well as the problem of “conflict sensitivity.” I want to reiterate that we are only talking about technical assistance to improve our defense capabilities,” Simonyan said during his meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw.
Touching upon the agenda of establishing lasting peace in the region, Simonyan highlighted the deployment of the Observation Mission of the European Union. Alen Simonyan presented details about the crisis afflicting the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh and the danger threatening the sovereignty of Armenia because of the Azerbaijani aggression. He stressed that Armenia expects condemnation of such illegal and inhumane actions and up to imposing sanctions on Azerbaijan from the international colleagues.
Simonian praised the 27-nation bloc for deploying earlier this year 100 or so monitors along Armenia’s volatile border with Azerbaijan.
Ukraine is the main beneficiary of the EPF, having received 4.6 billion euros ($5 billion) in military aid from the EU fund since being invaded by Russia in February 2022. As recently as on June 26, EU countries agreed to increase the maximum size of the fund by 3.5 billion euros to 12 billion euros. The bulk of the extra funding is expected to be channeled into the Ukrainian military.
