Armenia at intersection of the European integration – thoughts in the middle of the road

Armenia at intersection of the European integration – thoughts in the middle of the road

For two days Aghveran became a center of Armenia’s European integration process discussions. Friedrich-Ebert Foundation and Yerevan Press Club organized a training-discussion over “Armenia’s integration process among modern geopolitical context” topic. Event gathered together delegates of different international organizations and Armenian and local civil society organizations’ representatives, as well as media representatives.

Main topic of meeting was future of Armenia in Europe, process’ opportunities and aims. Each participant had enough time to express and assert their point of view and opinions were varied over. After the very first speeches it seemed hard to find common approach, but high professionalism of experts made possible to find out agree-key issues.

Association of Audio-Visual reporters NGO was also a participant of meeting. NGO’s president Arzuman Harutyunyan raised the issue of human trafficking in Europe which came up in a very threatening way after migrant’s crises.

Question was answered by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Armenia Bernhard Matthias Kiesler, who earlier introduced report on “Migrants problem in Europe. Policy of Federal Republic of Germany”. The report presents in details European approaches to migrants problems settlement, which come out from Syrian crises migration flows.

According to Matthias Kiesler Europe is going to be very careful to give proper consideration to human trafficking issues during migration flows regulation. Ambassador’s and “Audio-Visual” NGO’s anxiety on this issue has a serious foundation. Last year “Audio-Visual” team visited Turkey in a framework of human trafficking research and prevention short travel-program. As investigation had shown that Turkey adopted a number of migrants which can turn to a human trafficking high risk situation.

At his turn Yerevan Press Club President Boris Navasardyan presented “Information component in integration process” report. Mr. Navasardyan talked about pretty interesting observations regarding free information and propaganda relations.

All in all important problems and their possible solutions were formulated during the meeting by all participants. One of them is that Armenia cannot remain indifferent in global European integration processes, first because of specific geopolitical location and need of complimentary policies protection, and many other different reasons.

Photos of meeting are available by following link: https://goo.gl/wF0FWU