STRASBOURG, Sept. 30, 2025
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Yerevan and Baku have already agreed that a peace treaty containing mutual renunciation of territorial claims would carry greater legal weight than even the constitutions of the two countries.
Speaking at the autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Pashinyan stressed that Armenia’s planned constitutional reforms – under discussion since February 2020 – are a purely domestic matter, not tied to the peace process with Azerbaijan.
While Baku has argued that Armenia’s constitution contains territorial claims, Pashinyan pointed to rulings by Armenia’s Constitutional Court. In September 2024, the court approved the regulations of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border delimitation commission, finding them compatible with both countries’ constitutions.
He also recalled the October 2022 Prague meeting, where leaders committed to building relations based on the 1991 Almaty Declaration, which recognizes the borders of former Soviet republics.
Crucially, Pashinyan noted, the draft peace agreement specifies that once signed, neither side may invoke domestic legislation to justify failure to implement its provisions. “Even if Azerbaijan’s concerns are valid, the shortest path to resolving them is to sign and ratify the peace treaty,” he said.
“That treaty would establish a binding prohibition on territorial claims, with greater legal force than internal laws.”
He added that Armenia’s constitutional reform project is focused on addressing a “crisis of trust” between citizens and state institutions that, in his words, had developed after years of election irregularities.
Baku has repeatedly stated that it is ready to sign a peace treaty once Yerevan removes references to Nagorno-Karabakh from its 1990 Declaration of Independence, which is incorporated into the current Armenian constitution.
