Armenia and the European Union have discussed numerous projects, including cooperation in the field of border management, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Tuesday. 

“We have many projects and have discussed many initiatives, including in the area of border management cooperation,” he said at a press conference after the first Armenia–EU summit in Yerevan.

“I have repeatedly said that we want to make Armenia a very desirable and popular destination, and for that we need to facilitate travel for people. In the near future, alongside the introduction of biometric passports, we must also have non-contact border-crossing infrastructure at all our border checkpoints. Today, the European Union already has a very concrete contribution to our border management. The ‘Agarak’ border crossing on the Armenia–Iran border and the adjacent infrastructure are being built thanks to European investments,” he said.

Pashinyan added that there are also projects aimed at regional connectivity, based on the reality previously mentioned by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen—that the shortest route from East to West passes through Armenia.

“We are used to calculating issues in euros, dollars, and drams, but the statement that ‘the shortest route from East to West passes through Armenia’ is worth tens or hundreds of billions, even trillions. This is a signal at the highest level to the international investment community that there is potential here worth tens of billions, if not hundreds. And we are grateful to our EU partners for helping us also discover that potential,” Pashinyan emphasized.