On October 25, the 9th meeting of the joint Armenia-EU readmission commission was held, which was attended by representatives of the RA Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the RA Ministry of Internal Affairs, the European Commission, the EU delegation to Armenia and EU embassies. Member states took part, as well as the FRONTEX organization. The meeting was co-chaired by the head of the Migration and Citizenship Service Armen Ghazaryan and the head of the readmission department of the Department of Illegal Migration and Return Policy of the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs of the European Commission, Sylvain Pest. The Ambassador of the European Union to Armenia, Vasilis Maragos, noted that they are constantly working to introduce safe mechanisms in the field of migration management, the sectoral reforms initiated in the context of the creation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are highly appreciated, and there is a readiness to further support these changes, especially in the direction of strengthening the capabilities of the service. A. Ghazaryan presented the effective indicators of the Armenian side in the context of readmission cooperation, which, according to the meeting participants, are highly appreciated by European partners. It was noted that in the first half of this year, 237 applications were received in Armenia, with 382 people requesting readmission. RA citizenship was confirmed for 89.66 percent of admitted persons. The majority of requests, 129 out of 212 people, came from Germany. Kazaryan recalled that in 2020, the number of claims received was 503, and the number of persons included in them was 867.

The head of the Investigative Service also spoke about the trends observed in migration processes in Armenia in recent years, noting that Armenia has turned from a country of emigration into a country of transit and immigration, and most of the abuses with asylum applications were recorded in the EU. Countries related to health problems, and work in this direction is underway. S. Regarding the indicators of RA citizens who illegally crossed the borders of EU countries, the observed trends, Peshta mentioned the rejected asylum applications in recent years and the processes of forced and voluntary return resulting from them. The parties discussed statistics on readmission issues, the state of bilateral protocols for the implementation of the agreement, as well as other technical and substantive issues aimed at increasing the efficiency of implementation of the agreement. The currently implemented state program to promote reintegration and the work being carried out to improve the system of voluntary return and reintegration to Armenia were noted. The European side, in turn, expressed satisfaction with the effective cooperation with the Armenian side. The parties agreed to continue active steps towards the further implementation of the Armenia-EU readmission agreement.