Armenian authorities arrested opposition leader Artur Danielyan in early October for Facebook posts criticizing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan — part of an escalating pattern in which criminal charges are brought against political opponents based on social media activity. Over a dozen civil society organizations condemned the prosecution as "patently illegal, disproportionate, and politically motivated," describing it as a signal designed to silence dissent. The Danielyan case is not isolated. Displaced Nagorno-Karabakh activist Artur Osipyan was arrested ahead of June parliamentary elections after a verbal confrontation with Pashinyan over his Karabakh policy, then charged with disrupting public order and inciting violence via a social media post. A Freedom House report found that nearly 95% of court cases under a 2020 criminal code amendment targeting public calls to violence involved alleged threats against Pashinyan and his supporters — while pro-government figures directing hostile rhetoric at Karabakh refugees faced no equivalent scrutiny. The selectivity is the mechanism. Article 226.2, added to Armenia's Criminal Code in April 2020, penalizes public calls to violence and their justification. After civil society backlash, the offenses were formally decriminalized. But the enforcement pattern persists: the Regional Center for Democracy and Security documented pro-government bloggers using derogatory language against displaced Karabakh Armenians throughout the 2026 pre-election period, with law enforcement largely declining to act. Brussels has remained conspicuously quiet. Political analyst Tigran Grigoryan told DW that the EU has adopted a "very pragmatic and geopolitically driven approach," treating Armenia as its primary regional partner after Georgia's democratic deterioration. Stefan Meister of the German Council on Foreign Relations was blunter: European support for Armenia is "mainly driven by the European Russia policy" — strengthening forces that undermine Moscow's regional influence, not evaluating Armenian governance on its own terms. This creates a perverse incentive structure. Pashinyan leverages geopolitical positioning to label domestic critics as Russian proxies, and the EU accepts the framing. As Meister noted, "not everyone who criticizes Pashinyan is pro-Russian" — but the narrative serves both Yerevan's consolidation of power and Brussels' desire for a clean anti-Russia partner in the South Caucasus. The EU's formal position — that investigations "should be carried out in an independent and impartial manner, free from political considerations" — is boilerplate that imposes no cost. Democracy, rule of law, and fundamental rights are nominally at the core of the EU-Armenia CEPA and Strategic Agenda, but the enforcement gap between stated values and actual leverage is where selective prosecution thrives. The 19 Armenian detainees in Baku, over 100,000 displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan's 2023 offensive, and the upcoming political cycle form the backdrop against which Pashinyan is consolidating control. The question is whether Brussels will continue to treat democratic backsliding as an acceptable cost of geopolitical alignment — and what precedent that sets for every other aspiring EU partner watching.
