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The EU Council adopts 2 years of duty-free entry for about 80% of Armenia’s exports, the only such regime for a country with neither candidate status nor a free-trade area with the EU

The Council of the European Union formally adopted on Thursday the temporary trade-liberalisation measures for Armenian goods, suspending import duties on about 80% of Armenia’s exports to the EU for 2 years from the day after the regulation’s publication in the Official Journal, Armenpress reported at 14:34. Ireland’s foreign minister Helen McEntee, for the presidency: “We are stepping up our support for Armenia and its people, who have clearly chosen a pro-European path in spite of foreign pressures. Today’s decision will help Armenia’s economy hit by trade restrictions”. Ani Badalyan, the foreign ministry’s spokeswoman, said Armenia becomes the only country that, “without EU candidate status or a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area agreement with the EU, receives such an economic benefit”.

By CAW Staff24 September 2026
Extreme close-up of the velvety skin of a single apricot with its seam running diagonally across the frame, lit from the side in amber.

In Brussels the measures took 3 weeks. On 2 September the Council backed the Commission’s proposal, on 15 September the European Parliament voted it through by 583 votes to 49 with 39 abstentions, and Thursday’s adoption is the last step before the Official Journal; the measures were written after Russia’s summer restrictions on Armenian produce, the ones the central bank priced on 15 September as a glut at home, with tomatoes down 53%. The regulation runs 2 years; the dependence it answers is older.

The same morning carried Armenia’s other sentence on dependence. Alen Simonyan, the Security Council’s secretary, said in remarks Armenpress carried at 13:35 that “we are not prepared, and will no longer be prepared, to depend on a single pipeline or a single pressure point”, and that Armenia would weigh supply offers from its neighbours, amid talk of a higher Russian gas tariff; the household price is 143.7 dram a cubic metre, 100 dram for the vulnerable.

The regulation runs 2 years; the dependence it answers is older.

What the 80% covers is the Commission’s list, and the ministry’s spokeswoman named “certain agricultural products” among the goods whose duties fall; the goods will be priced against the tariff-free line from the day the Journal prints it. The 2 years will be measured on the Russian side of the same trade, in the produce bans and the gas price.

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