On Thursday 2 September the Court of Justice of the European Union annulled EU Council Decisions 2020/245 and 2020/246 which split the implementing rules of the EU-Armenia Partnership Agreement, signed in November 2017 (see EUROPE 11912/2), in order to separate Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) issues from other components of the bilateral agreement such as transport, trade and development (Cases C-180/20).
The Court notes that the main purpose of the bilateral agreement is to establish the framework for transport, trade and development cooperation with Armenia. It observes that the enumeration of specific goals of the agreement in relation to the CFSP is not accompanied by any action programme or concrete cooperation modalities that would establish that the CFSP is one of the distinct components of the agreement, alongside the trade and development cooperation aspects.
The Court concludes that this agreement has certain links with the CFSP, but these are not sufficient to constitute an autonomous component of that agreement capable of justifying the adoption of a separate decision based on a different legal basis (Article 37 TEU) and requiring different voting arrangements (unanimity instead of a qualified majority of Member States).
See the Court’s judgment: https://bit.ly/3DEym3z (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)