Europe comes to Yerevan. Pashinyan still has to sell the peace at home.

Ilham Aliyev appeared at an event hosted by Armenia on 4 May. He did so by video, rather than by crossing the border, but Nikol Pashinyan was quick to mark the distinction from everything that had come before.

For the Armenian prime minister, the Azerbaijani president’s participation in the European Political Community summit in Yerevan was a public demonstration that relations were changing. A day later, Pashinyan hosted European Council President António Costa and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for Armenia’s first bilateral summit with the EU.

The two meetings gave a small South Caucasus state an unusually concentrated dose of European diplomatic attention. More than 40 heads of state and government took part in the EPC gathering. Canada’s Mark Carney joined as a guest, while Britain’s Keir Starmer and other leaders used the visit for bilateral talks.

Pashinyan wants that attention to produce something more durable than a successful summit. His government is seeking investment, stronger links with Europe and practical support for a regional opening that remains politically contested.

The timing sharpens the stakes. Armenia is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on 7 June. Before voters reach the ballot box, Pashinyan has been able to show European leaders endorsing closer relations and a policy of normalisation with neighbours.

But the agreements published in Yerevan do not say that all the difficult issues have been resolved. The EU–Armenia declaration explicitly calls for the signing and ratification of the peace treaty with Azerbaijan. It welcomes the progress already made while acknowledging, in its operative language, the work still required.

That leaves Pashinyan with a demanding argument to make: the opening is real enough to justify continued political commitment, even though some of its most important benefits remain prospective.

A remote guest, and a disagreement inside the European audience

Pashinyan traced the diplomatic sequence back to the first EPC meeting in Prague in 2022. In his opening address, he recalled the meeting with Aliyev, French President Emmanuel Macron and then European Council President Charles Michel, and the recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrity on the basis of the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration.

He then pointed to the August 2025 meeting in Washington. The Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders signed a joint declaration there, with Donald Trump witnessing it, while their foreign ministers initialled the text of a peace agreement.

Initialling a text and bringing a treaty into force are separate steps. The distinction does not make the Washington outcome insignificant. It explains why the subsequent European declaration continues to speak about institutionalising peace rather than treating the legal settlement as finished.

Aliyev used his video address to emphasise movement on trade and transit. According to his published remarks, Azerbaijan had removed restrictions on cargo travelling to Armenia and had begun supplying petroleum products. He also said Armenia supported Azerbaijan’s proposal to host a future EPC summit.

“We are learning to live in peace,” Aliyev told the meeting.

The phrase captured the gap between ending confrontation and creating normal relations. Officials can agree to permit a shipment. Businesses still need to know that permission will survive the next political disagreement. Governments can endorse a transport route. The route still needs rules that both sides accept.

Aliyev’s address also exposed a split in the European audience. He praised the Commission’s approach to the peace process while criticising the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He said Azerbaijan’s parliament had decided on 1 May to suspend cooperation with the European Parliament.

This was not an incidental complaint. It showed that European executive diplomacy and parliamentary scrutiny are producing different reactions in Baku. A successful meeting with EU leaders does not imply that elected European assemblies will stop raising contentious questions.

For Armenia, that divergence can be uncomfortable but useful. The government wants space to negotiate and incentives for normalisation. It also has an interest in international attention to unresolved human and political issues. Treating every critical parliamentary intervention as an obstacle to peace would narrow the range of voices able to question the terms of the process.

For EU leaders, the challenge is to support an agreement without allowing access to diplomatic forums to become a way of avoiding scrutiny. A relationship capable of carrying both cooperation and criticism would be more resilient than one that depends on keeping all disagreements out of public view.

Aliyev’s remote appearance itself illustrates how gradual the process remains. The format enabled participation and a public exchange without the political weight of an in-person presidential visit. That is progress on its own terms; it need not be inflated into something more complete to matter.

The EU puts projects behind the photograph

The bilateral summit on 5 May shifted the discussion from the broad EPC gathering to a more specific EU–Armenia programme. Pashinyan, Costa and von der Leyen agreed a connectivity partnership built around transport, energy and digital cooperation.

Their joint declaration referred to an existing €270 million resilience and growth plan and said investments under Global Gateway were expected to reach €2.5 billion. It also supported regional transport initiatives, including Armenia’s Crossroads of Peace proposal and the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.

Those figures describe different instruments and expectations. They should not be added together as if they were a single newly transferred cash payment. The political value of the announcement will depend on which projects attract finance and how quickly they can move from a summit document into construction or operating services.

Pashinyan offered a revealing account of the change he wanted. Armenia’s geography, he said at the closing press appearance, had long been described as a disadvantage. European partners were now discussing it as an opportunity to connect markets.

The country has not moved. The proposition is that the political conditions around its borders can change.

That is why transport is central to the diplomatic bargain. A new or reopened connection could give firms another route to customers and suppliers. It could reduce the economic cost of isolation and create interests on both sides of a border in keeping the route open.

Yet the distribution of control matters as much as the route on a map. Customs procedures, inspection rights, fees and responsibility for security determine whether a connection increases a state’s options or creates a new point at which it can be pressured.

The summit language about sovereignty, jurisdiction and reciprocity is therefore practical. It concerns who makes decisions along the route and what happens when those decisions are disputed. Investors may welcome an announcement, but they will eventually need answers to those questions.

Energy cooperation creates a parallel test. Pashinyan highlighted the potential of solar power and the need for storage, linking Armenian resources to European technology and support. The ambition is to reduce exposure to external suppliers while making the domestic system more reliable.

More generation alone would not deliver that result. A power system needs networks, balancing and dependable operation as well as installed capacity. A project that helps households and firms obtain reliable electricity could have a more immediate political effect than a larger investment total whose benefits are difficult to identify.

The EU’s summit account also recorded progress in the visa-liberalisation dialogue launched in 2024. That is a distinct process with benchmarks. The meeting did not itself create visa-free travel.

For Armenian citizens, mobility could become one of the most tangible measures of closer relations. It would affect study, family connections and business travel in ways that a diplomatic declaration rarely does. Precisely because expectations can rise quickly, both sides need to be clear about the stages that remain.

Pashinyan’s formulation on EU membership was notably conditional. He described alignment with European standards as an objective that would benefit Armenia even if the EU ultimately made a political decision not to admit it.

That is an attempt to give reforms a purpose independent of a membership promise. The May summit recognised European aspirations; it did not open accession negotiations or settle an admission date. The useful question for the coming period is what Armenia can gain from closer cooperation while those larger decisions remain unresolved.

A security offer with carefully defined limits

Europe’s presence in Yerevan is expanding beyond investment and diplomatic visits. On 21 April, the Council established a new civilian EU Partnership Mission in Armenia, intended to advise national institutions on threats including information manipulation, cyberattacks and illicit financial flows.

The mission has an initial two-year mandate. It is separate from the EU Mission in Armenia established in 2023 to observe conditions on the ground and support confidence and human security in conflict-affected areas.

That distinction matters. The new initiative concerns the ability of institutions to handle pressure and crises. It should not be mistaken for the deployment of a European combat force or an automatic defence guarantee.

Its relevance is immediate in an election period. A government can face disruption without a conventional military attack: compromised information systems, opaque political financing or organised attempts to undermine confidence in electoral institutions can create serious problems of their own.

The mission’s remit also makes safeguards essential. Support against foreign interference should strengthen institutions that serve the whole electorate. It should not provide a label under which legitimate domestic opposition is treated as a security threat.

The European Parliament made that connection in its 30 April resolution, adopted by 476 votes to 47 with 48 abstentions. It backed efforts to protect Armenian democracy while emphasising independent electoral administration, equal campaign conditions, media pluralism and fundamental freedoms.

MEPs condemned foreign interference, particularly threats they attributed to Russia and its proxies. Those allegations form part of Parliament’s assessment. They do not remove the need to examine the evidence behind particular incidents or to preserve the right of Armenian voters to disagree about the country’s foreign policy.

Britain added its own bilateral framework during the visit. A strategic partnership declaration, exchanged by Starmer and Pashinyan and published by London on 5 May, set out cooperation on defence, institutional reform, border security, cyber resilience and other areas.

The British text also backed normalisation with Azerbaijan on the basis of sovereignty and territorial integrity. It gives London a framework for sustained engagement, but its value will depend on the assistance and expertise that follow. The creation of another diplomatic label does not automatically increase Armenia’s practical capacity.

Taken together, these initiatives give Pashinyan more partners and a broader set of options. They also create a coordination problem. Armenian institutions will have to absorb advice, finance and programmes from several sources without allowing overlapping priorities to consume the capacity they are intended to strengthen.

For Europe, the attraction of civilian support is that it can respond to identified needs without making military commitments governments have not agreed to undertake. The limitation is equally clear: advice and institutional assistance cannot answer every security concern that Armenia faces.

The election beyond the summit

The EPC format helped make this concentration of diplomacy possible. It brings EU and non-EU leaders together without requiring them to share the same institutional relationship with Brussels. In Yerevan, that allowed regional normalisation, European security and bilateral cooperation to be discussed in the same setting.

It also carried subjects far beyond Armenia. A migration statement released by the British government set out commitments by a broad group of participating leaders to continue cooperation along migration routes. The meeting was a working opportunity for visiting governments as well as a diplomatic milestone for the host.

That broader agenda is part of the format’s strength. It is also a reason not to confuse the size of the gathering with a single shared commitment to Armenia. Each government came with its own priorities, and the EPC is not a substitute for a treaty or a funded programme.

Pashinyan’s task is to turn the commitments relevant to his country into an argument voters can judge. The peace process offers the possibility of reopened routes and fewer security risks. European cooperation offers access to investment, expertise and institutions. Neither promises that the transition will be painless or that every gain will arrive before the election.

A credible campaign argument would identify what has already changed, what has been agreed and what still requires negotiation. It would leave space for voters to question terms without treating that scrutiny as hostility to peace.

European leaders face a related discipline. Supporting democratic resilience means supporting a competitive political process, not guaranteeing a favourable result for a partner they prefer. The legitimacy of the opening will be stronger if it survives scrutiny and derives authority from Armenian voters.

The May meetings have changed the diplomatic setting around Armenia. Aliyev participated in an event hosted by his former adversary; the EU put a bilateral summit and practical cooperation on the calendar; Britain formalised a strategic partnership.

The next tests are closer to home: a competitive election, progress towards a signed and ratified peace treaty, and projects that change the daily cost of living with closed or uncertain borders. The photographs have established that Europe is paying attention. Armenian voters will decide what political weight that attention should carry.