On October 6, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, who is in Sweden on a working visit, participated in the discussion entitled “Connecting EAP with the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development, how to address resistance” at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

Reflecting on the cooperation within the framework of the EAP and Sustainable Development, Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan particularly highlighted  the sense of ownership of State and Government towards reforms and manifestation of the constructive will of each country and government to promote that agenda.

Minister Mnatsakanyan emphasized that Armenia considers the Sustainable Development  Goals and the EAP as an important framework of international cooperation to make the best use of promoting national agenda, reforms and developments within its scope.

“We had many interesting discussions on this in New York on Sustainable Development Goals. It is the center of the set of priorities that we all commit to implement and appear the nice guys at the United Nations. No! It is a policy framework, which helps us to enrich our thinking and views  that are instruments of international cooperation to take forward our national agenda of reform, but the key word is ownership by the country, by the government of the country, by the people of the country․Reform agenda does not belong to the UN, to the Eastern Partnership, to the EU. It belongs to the country, specific country. SDG is a very helpful policy framework, the way in which the capacity of each Government, in our case the Government of Armenia to accommodate this policy framework, those policy priorities to our reform agenda is that path to our capacity to use international cooperation for accelerating our domestic agenda, our domestic reforms.”

Reflecting on the efforts of the current Government, directed to the confidence- building in society, Minister Mnatsakanyan noted that the Velvet Revolution was possible to implement due to the capacity of institutional structures, which is also related with the  Sustainable Development Goal 16, the priorities of the EAP and the Rule of Law.

“The message was very clear - to address at this phase, immediately after the revolution  those most egregious and most difficult questions, which are the heart of mistrust by a way of applying strong political will, we have shown results. We know very well that it is not enough. We know very well that the whole point is about the institutional consolidation to address those issues, which concern the rule of law and good governance. So it is the institutions that we attach the most important focus on. Institutions, which guarantee and sustain the rule of law and good governance, which are capable to absorb shocks.”