The EU calls its new 64-page agenda with Armenia a “strategic partnership.” In practice, it reads like a political time capsule, one that drags the region back into the pre-2020 mindset and recycles narratives already settled on the ground. After the Washington D.C. Summit and the initialing of the Azerbaijan–Armenia peace agreement, Brussels had an opportunity to solidify progress. Instead, the EU chose to anchor Armenia’s political comfort zone while sidelining the core realities that define today’s South Caucasus.