Pashinyan says Armenia will file for EU membership before any referendum

Nikol Pashinyan told Armenia's National Assembly on 24 August that the government will start work on an official European Union membership application in the near future. He said a national referendum will come only after Brussels answers and after a negotiation roadmap exists. Asking voters to choose now, he argued, would put a real option, the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, against an option that has not yet been requested.

The speech sat inside the presentation of the government's 2026-2031 programme. Pashinyan's Civil Contract party holds 64 of 105 seats after the June election. That majority can carry a formal application without opposition votes. It cannot, on its own, change the constitution, which would need two-thirds of the chamber and then a referendum.

Armenia already has a law on the books. On 26 March 2025 parliament adopted a text titled "On the Launch of the Process of Accession to the European Union." Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Galuzin has used that title to argue that the process has already begun. Yerevan has treated the law as a statement of intent, not as a bid. Pashinyan's new line closes that gap.

The pressure from the other direction is written down. On 29 May the leaders of the other EAEU states issued a joint statement calling for an Armenian referendum, in the shortest possible time, on joining the EU or staying in the Eurasian bloc. Pashinyan has called recent Russian restrictions on Armenian agro-food exports a crisis inside the EAEU itself. Those goods had gone to Russia for decades. He said Yerevan would take the EAEU partners' call into account by filing in Brussels first.

The European Commission answered on 25 August. Spokeswoman Paula Pinho said an Armenian application would be another sign of the Union's pull and that Brussels would examine it with interest. Spokesman Markus Lammert added the standard caution: accession follows a set procedure and rests on merit. The Commission is waiting for an official letter. Ursula von der Leyen opened most of the EU market to Armenian exports on 2 July, after the first EU-Armenia summit in Yerevan on 5 May. Visa-liberalisation talks are aimed at 2029.

Pashinyan also spoke about the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. He said he would be glad if the CSTO removed Armenia on its own, because that would end the choice of whether to leave. Armenia has frozen its participation in the alliance since the 2020 and 2023 wars with Azerbaijan, when CSTO partners did not intervene. Galuzin said in June that Yerevan has given no official signal about the Russian base at Gyumri.

None of the steps Pashinyan listed on Monday has started. There is no filing date. There is no candidate status. The political sequence he described is application, Commission opinion, Council decision to open talks, a roadmap, then a referendum. Each stage can take years. Several current candidates have waited more than a decade.

The immediate effect is on Armenia's bargaining position inside the EAEU and with Moscow. Filing in Brussels gives Pashinyan a document to hold up when Eurasian partners demand a binary vote. It also gives European governments a test they have so far avoided: whether they will treat a South Caucasus state that still hosts a Russian base as a serious applicant. The letter, when it is sent, will force that answer onto a docket.