Armenian Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Territorial Administration Armen Gevorgyan said that the regions of Armenia and France develop their cooperation from year to year.

Initially, the cooperation was in the form of aid provided to Armenia’s regions suffered from the 1988 earthquake, but now the countries cooperate within projects of mutual interests, Gevorgyan said during an Armenian-French forum of decentralized cooperation.

Besides, the Deputy Prime Minister noted that local self-government bodies were formed in Armenia in 1996 in compliance with the European Charter of Local Self-Government.

“The Armenian government develops a new concept of self-government for the upcoming three years in close cooperation with the European Union. The exchange of experience through decentralized cooperation is important for us. The European direction is among basic foreign policy vectors of Armenia. And the cooperation between Armenia’s and France’s regions is a large-scale one, it can be labeled as strategic,” Minister Gevorgyan said.