Armenia’s Uncertain Path to Europe

Since losing control of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in 2023, Armenia has increasingly turned to the West. Yerevan’s political distancing from the Kremlin reached a new level in March 2025, when a majority of the Armenian parliament voted to start the country’s possible EU accession process.

Armenia’s interest in the EU, while recently intensified, is not entirely new. In 2017, the two sides signed a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement to advance economic, legal, and political cooperation. In 2023, the EU deployed a civilian monitoring mission on the Armenian side of the border with Azerbaijan to observe and report on the situation on the ground.

Yet, while the Armenian government is diversifying its foreign policy by balancing between Russia and the West, Armenia’s economic and military dependence on Russia is contributing to an increased polarisation of society.

Armenians’ shifting attitudes

For decades, the Armenian public had considered Russia their country’s ‘main friend’ and protecting power. That perception started changing after the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War with Azerbaijan in 2020. Data from the Caucasus Barometer survey show that after the failure of Russian peacekeepers to protect Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, who were forced to flee the region in 2023, Russia’s popularity among the Armenian public fell.

According to the same survey, Armenians also have a clear sense of disillusionment with democracy. That is despite some encouraging signs of democratisation, such as continuing anti-corruption reforms.

When Reporters Without Borders published its 2025 Press Freedom Index, Armenia performed surprisingly well, ranking 34th out of 180, ahead of EU countries such as Italy, Slovakia, and Greece – and well above neighbours Georgia and Azerbaijan. In terms of broader freedoms, however, Freedom House characterises Armenia as only partly free. The country has made no major progress in this area since the 2018 Velvet Revolution, a protest movement and peaceful transfer of power to the government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, which has significantly shifted Armenia’s politics and re-evaluated the country’s relations with Russia.

Pashinyan is seeking closer ties with the EU. According to a survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in June 2025, almost half of the Armenian population supports EU membership. At the same time, however, opposition parties, the powerful Armenian Apostolic Church, and local oligarchs with close economic ties to Russia are aligning with Russia. Tensions between the government and the church have recently intensified. This could further increase the division in society.

Polarised views of the EU

On the topic of EU membership, Armenian society is becoming increasingly polarised, and, accordingly, the number of people who are undecided is decreasing. Fewer and fewer Armenians have no fixed opinion on the EU or are undecided about whether to trust the Union. While 45 per cent of respondents to a 2019 survey were undecided about whether to trust the EU, this share had dropped to just 27 per cent by 2024.

To put it another way, ever more Armenians are taking a clear stance either in favour of or against closer ties with the EU. So, although support for membership has increased, an influential strand of Euroscepticism remains.

Overall, 44 per cent of the Armenian population supports Armenia’s future EU membership, while 27 per cent does not. Interestingly, trust in the EU is much lower: Only 30 per cent of Armenians trust the union, while 42 per cent do not. A major reason for this is that international organisations have lost a great deal of trust as a result of their failure to respond to the 2023 expulsion of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Data from the 2024 Caucasus Barometer survey do not support the common assumption that young people in Armenia are pro-European. Instead, older people are more likely to support EU membership. Yevgenya Jenny Paturyan, a sociologist from the American University of Armenia in Yerevan, emphasised that there is no classic urban-rural divide, as in many other post-communist states, where young urban populations and students are usually pro-European, while the youth in the countryside is more conservative and traditionalist. It is the educated, urban youth in Yerevan who are very critical of EU accession. Conversely, elderly people from rural areas support Pashinyan and his political dream of joining the EU.

The question is why. There are various possible explanations. One is that younger, more educated people have a more realistic view of the potential benefits and drawbacks of EU accession. Older people in rural areas mainly see the great economic and political promise of EU membership. Political support for Pashinyan and his party outside Yerevan is also a reason for voters to back pro-EU policies.

Another reason for Euroscepticism among young people may go back to the relatively high percentage of Armenians who view the collapse of the Soviet Union as a negative event and place their trust in the church, the military, and the police. According to a 2023 study by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung as well as the IRI survey 2025, on the one hand, young Armenians value Western values and express liberal positions, with 52 per cent of Armenia’s youth agreeing that democracy is the best form of government for the country. On the other hand, they position themselves in opposition to Europe and do not consider themselves European.

Armenia’s youth is characterised by conflicting perceptions of the Soviet past. Those with a higher level of education are more likely to think that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a good thing than those with a lower level of education. Male survey respondents were considerably more likely than female participants to see the dissolution of the Soviet Union in a bad light. And young people living in rural areas are more likely to feel negatively about this event than those in the capital or other urban areas.

A tricky balancing act

Armenia is pursuing a complex geopolitical balancing act. Although EU-Armenia cooperation has deepened, particularly since the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, the political goal of EU membership is controversial and mainly symbolic. Given the country’s isolation, Nikol Pashinyan favours not only closer ties with the EU but also a multi-vector geostrategic partnership. Through this, he aims to build diversified and balanced relationships with the EU and the US without entirely moving away from Armenia’s reliance on Russia’s economic, military, and cultural power. Armenia’s June 2026 parliamentary election will be an important test of the prime minister’s political strategy.

PD Dr. Tsypylma Darieva is a social anthropologist and a senior researcher at ZOiS, where she heads the Migration and Diversity research cluster. She is also a co-founder of the ZOiS Caucasus Network.

Paul Wernig is a student assistant in Migration and Diversity research cluster and is involved in the ZOiS Caucasus Network.