The sixth EU-Armenia Partnership Council took place on 2 December 2025, where both sides adopted a new 64-page Strategic Partnership Agenda designed to deepen political, economic and security ties. While this document is presented as a natural extension of the 2017 Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA), the reality is a far more assertive political shift in how Brussels intends to structure its presence in Armenia and vice versa. Amidst the signing of the Azerbaijan-Armenia peace agreement, the Russia-Ukraine war, and, importantly, the upcoming Armenian elections, this Strategic Agenda is likely to have a bigger geopolitical weight than CEPA. 

So, what exactly is in this new Strategic Agenda, how is it different to previous agreements between Armenia and the EU, and why does it matter now? 

The new ‘Armenia–EU Partnership Strategic Agenda’ is essentially an expanded and updated cooperation roadmap that sits alongside CEPA, rather than replacing or revising it. It takes the original 2017 agreement as a base and introduces new focus areas uncovered by CEPA, including security and defence, visa liberalisation, hybrid-threat resilience, election protection, large-scale EU investment initiatives and expanded connectivity projects. 

The document’s most visible departure from CEPA is the introduction of security and defence cooperation, a clause the 2017 agreement deliberately avoided. Under the new framework, Armenia will participate more actively in EU crisis-management missions through the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) framework participation agreement, ratified in 2023, and Brussels will allocate €10 million to support Armenian armed forces. Economically, too, the agenda welcomes a series of large-scale EU investments, including the €270 million Resilience and Growth Plan and the planned €500 million Caucasus Transmission Network linking Armenia to EU-backed regional energy infrastructure. 

This sits alongside the continued presence of the EU Monitoring Mission in Armenia (EUMA), whose mandate now extends to 2027, whereby a team of experts are deployed along the Armenian side of the international border with Azerbaijan to examine and monitor regional developments. The extension of EUMA is particularly surprising following the historic peace agreement signed in July, and has been a topic of consternation for the Azerbaijani side, which stresses that post-conflict border management must remain strictly bilateral. Similar to the Russian peacekeeping troops, the continued presence of a third-party mission in a post-conflict setting raises questions about its relevance and operational necessity.  

A particularly sensitive component of the new Strategic Agenda is the terminology it uses in reference to the events in Karabakh in September 2023. Page four of the document refers to such individuals as ‘displaced persons’ and ‘refugees’ in some cases, misrepresenting the voluntary nature of the relocation and introducing a narrative inconsistent with post-conflict neutrality. The EU, as an international organisation involved in the peace process, must remain visibly neutral on issues linked to the former conflict. Departing from this principle risks alienating a key energy partner at a time when Brussels is trying to expand gas imports and broader energy cooperation with Baku through the Southern Gas Corridor. Moreover, by drawing unresolved bilateral matters into its partnership agenda with Yerevan, Brussels risks undermining the very post-conflict stabilisation it seeks to support and jeapordises the strategic trust necessary for concluding the long-negotiated EU-Azerbaijan comprehensive agreement. 

Another major addition is the set of instruments designed to reinforce hybrid-threat resilience and electoral security. The EU High Representative Kaja Kallas had announced the allocation €15 million to strengthen Armenia’s resilience, including technical assistance, such as training for sappers, the provision of specialised equipment, and measures to counter hybrid attacks and disinformation campaigns allegedly carried out by ‘Russia and its proxies’. The timing of this support is unsurprising, arriving months before Armenia’s 2026 parliamentary elections and at a moment when Brussels is increasingly concerned about Russian interference across the Eastern Partnership states. 

Armenia, too, has an interest in presenting this support from the EU as part of a broader political shift. Having launched its EU accession process in March 2025 and entered an active phase of the visa-liberalisation dialogue, Yerevan is eager to show that its foreign-policy trajectory is changing. And, with the 2026 parliamentary elections approaching, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has centered his ‘Real Armenia’ campaign on reducing dependence on Russia, reopening borders, and normalising relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey. 

Despite a decline in his approval ratings since 2018, Pashinyan faces a fragmented opposition, and the most significant pushback to his foreign-policy realignment now comes from outside Armenia: the nationalist diaspora and Russia, both of which oppose his normalisation track. EU assistance on hybrid-threat resilience therefore plays directly into this narrative. It allows Pashinyan to present Armenia as drifting out of Moscow’s orbit, while showcasing Western backing at a moment when Russia’s influence in Armenia has sharply declined. Recent polling reinforces this shift, with nearly half the population supporting a peace treaty with Baku, giving Pashinyan space to pursue his regional agenda with visible European support. 

A separate point of concern for Baku is the Strategic Agenda’s complete omission of the Trump Route Infrastructure Project (TRIPP), a key trilateral initiative agreed at the Washington summit on 8 August. While the document references Armenia’s own ‘Crossroads of Peace’ concept, it makes no mention of TRIPP, despite its key role in the normalisation process. Again, such clauses raise concerns about the EU’s neutrality in the post-conflict order.

Overall, for Azerbaijan, the Strategic Agenda introduces several structural risks. First, the absence of an updated contractual framework between Baku and Brussels contrasts sharply with the multi-layered cooperation now established with Yerevan, creating a political asymmetry in the region’s diplomatic landscape. The continuation of EUMA, the ambiguous language, and the expansion of EU involvement in Armenia’s electoral and security sectors collectively signal a degree of alignment that Baku views with caution. While the EU continues to publicly support the Armenia–Azerbaijan normalisation process, the depth of its engagement with Yerevan, particularly in security and border-adjacent areas, risks narrowing the space for a balanced EU–Azerbaijan dialogue at a moment when Baku is seeking predictability from its partners. How the EU navigates this balance will determine its place in the post-conflict order, especially at a time when Azerbaijan is strengthening ties with individual EU states like Slovakia and Hungary.