Paris Peace Forum: Pashinyan outlines Armenia’s response to hybrid threats and banks on the EU
- Published
- Place
- Paris, France
- Event date
- Past event —
Summary
Armenia is cooperating “actively and closely” with the European Union against hybrid threats, Nikol Pashinyan said on Tuesday, 10 November, at the 9th Paris Peace Forum. The Armenian prime minister took part in a panel entitled “Holding the Line: Sovereignty in the Age of Hybrid Threats”, alongside Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda and North Macedonia’s President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova. He championed three tools against disinformation: transparency, direct dialogue with citizens and fact-checking. He also proposed a shared space where countries would exchange their experience of information attacks.
Outside, in the Trocadéro gardens, the Eiffel Tower had vanished into the fog. Inside, the talk was of another kind of fog: fake news. According to his office, Nikol Pashinyan used the Q&A session to set out the steps the Armenian government is taking against hybrid threats, stressing how quickly state institutions need to respond.
“Armenia has engaged in active and close cooperation with the European Union in countering hybrid threats,” he said, according to the state news agency Armenpress. He did not publicly detail what that cooperation involves.
“A Facebook live”, two hours, and nothing
The prime minister drew on his own experience. In 2022, he said, a piece of disinformation spread within hours and triggered a large public gathering. “I began livestreaming on my Facebook page to try to explain to our people what was happening. The gathering lasted two hours and came to nothing.” He said the same thing happened during the parliamentary election campaign in May and June this year.
For him, direct dialogue with the public remains “the most reliable tool” for governments. But it is not enough. He pointed to fact-checking, which has become “visibly established” in Armenia in recent years, and to media literacy. “People see something on social media and ask whether it is real. People are becoming fact-checkers themselves,” he said approvingly.
Transparency: easy to say
Nikol Pashinyan presented transparency as a safeguard: in an open society where information is accessible, disinformation is much harder to impose. He admitted its limits. “It is very easy to state the principle, but many problems arise at the stage of implementation.”
On cybersecurity, he called for tools that are developed continuously, because hybrid threats are “evolving much faster than we anticipated”. Hence his proposal for a common information-sharing space. “If something happens somewhere, it will certainly happen elsewhere too,” he summed up. Countries could share the incidents they have faced there, and how they were brought under control, or not.
A busy day in Paris
The same day, Nikol Pashinyan attended the opening of the summit “Children First: A Global Commitment to Child Well-being”, held as part of the forum. Emmanuel Macron gave a speech there, in front of Gitanas Nausėda, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova and Andorra’s head of government Xavier Espot Zamora, among others.
Also on Tuesday, he met Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti, then Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée. The forum, held on 10 and 11 November at the Palais de Chaillot, has the theme “From sovereignty to cooperation”.
Analysis
The choice of panel was no accident. Nikol Pashinyan shared the stage with Lithuania, on the front line facing Moscow, and with North Macedonia, an EU candidate. He placed Armenia among the countries that say they are targeted by destabilisation campaigns, without naming anyone. The timing speaks for itself: the next day in Moscow, the CSTO is due to consider suspending Armenia’s voting rights. The story also has a domestic angle: the prime minister presents himself as the man who defused a crisis with a simple livestream. The idea of a common information-sharing space remains, for now, a proposal floated at a panel.
Possible consequences
Nikol Pashinyan leaves Paris for Antalya, where he is taking part in the COP31 leaders’ summit on Wednesday, 11 November. The same day, the CSTO summit is held in Moscow without him. No agreement was announced after the panel.
