In the run-up to the elections, Russian authorities imposed de facto bans on the vast majority of Armenian-made products exported to Russia, the South Caucasus nation\u2019s main trading partner. Moscow also pressed Pashinyan\u2019s government to quickly choose between seeking to join the EU or remaining part of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a Russian-led economic bloc.\n<\/p>\n
The EU condemned the Russian embargo, saying that Moscow is \u201cweaponizing economic relations for political pressure\u201d on Armenia. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also announced on June 4 50 million euros ($58 million) in urgent economic assistance to Yerevan. She said the EU will also open its market to \u201csome Armenian products, in particular agri-food.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The EU released the first 34 million-euro installment of that aid on Friday. It said its Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos will visit Armenia on July 5 to \u201cadvance the implementation of the support package and discuss further steps to strengthen EU-Armenia cooperation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
For its part, the Armenian government has approved subsidies for domestic farmers, agribusiness firms and beverage producers that will find new export markets. Pashinyan said on Thursday that some of them are already signing \u201cbig and long-term\u201d supply contracts with European partners. But he did not give any numbers.\n<\/p>\n
According to Russian officials, Armenian agricultural exports to Russia totaled over $700 million last year. Armenian analysts are skeptical about Yerevan\u2019s ability to quickly offset the potential loss of such export revenue.\n<\/p>\n
Pashinyan and his political allies assured Armenians during the election campaign that Moscow will lift the trade restrictions if they win reelection. Russia\u2019s state agricultural watchdog on the contrary banned more food imports from Armenia on June 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the run-up to the elections, Russian authorities imposed de facto bans on the vast majority of Armenian-made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[705,39,40,1137,33227],"class_list":["post-77834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-commerce","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-geopolitics","tag-international-aid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}