Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan started the second day of his working visit to the Kingdom of Belgium by visiting the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Brussels. 

Hosted at this prestigious research institution, President Sargsyan met with the experts of the Center. The moderator of the meeting, a scientific researcher of the Carnegie Endowment Stephen Lehne, who has been studying the EU foreign policy developments and relations among the member states since the Lisbon Agreement, presented Serzh Sargsyan to the audience.

President Serzh Sargsyan made a statement and answered questions raised by the participants of the event. The audience was interested in Armenia’s foreign and internal policies, as well as in the RA President’s viewpoints and assessments on the regional and international pressing issues. 

Distinguished Mr. Lehne, Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great honor of course for me to speak at the event held at the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I am here for the first time but I recall warmly my meetings and discussions held at the Carnegie headquarters in Washington, D.C. Reputable platforms such as this one, on one hand provide the opportunity to present the logic behind the developments taking place in our country, and on the other hand, we learn from the very source about the latest expert analysis, estimates, and approaches. 

Finally, the very idea of international peace, which is laid in the basis of this Endowment, is the objective that has always attracted the entire civilized world. 

Distinguished Colleagues, 
Andrew Carnegie once said, “Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.” A good citizen is indisputably a guarantee of the success for a state. The more mature and informed the civil society is, the more efficient the state structures are. Strong civil society, along with the separation of powers, is one of the best mechanisms for checks and balances.

That was the driving force behind the process of constitutional reforms we initiated in our country, and it has been going on for over two years. The amended Constitution has defined more precisely the authority framework for different branches of power, stressing the respect for human rights and making the voice of people heard in all areas. As a result, in our country has already commenced the process of building such a political system in which the influential actors will be not the individuals but political forces, political institutions. Enlargement of political parties and formation of political coalitions is going on in Armenia at this moment; that is a welcome development, and we have been striving to achieve that. Political parties are getting consolidated as stable institutes; smaller parties are disappearing or merging together.

For Armenia, to amend the Constitution was a bold step aimed on one side to the decentralization of the government, on the other hand – at the strengthening of the legal and constitutional order, which will allow to eradicate unacceptable manifestations of the post-Soviet flaws, decrease the corruption risks and provide the best possible conditions to move the country forward on the path of sustainable development. 

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