"Italian Amb. H.E. Ferranti received by the new President of the Armenian Parliament" by Carlo Coppola
Rome and Yerevan reaffirmed the excellent state of their bilateral relations this week, as Italian Ambassador H. E. Alessandro Ferranti was received by Ruben Rubinyan, who took over as President of Armenia's National Assembly on 3 August 2026 after five years as the chamber's Deputy Speaker and head of its Foreign Relations Committee.
The meeting brought together substantial delegations from both sides. Ambassador Ferranti was accompanied by Embassy Counsellor Andrea Peduto, acting as deputy ambassador, and by the Embassy's interpreter, Aram Mkryan. On the Armenian side, alongside Speaker Rubinyan, the talks were also attended by the Parliament's Diplomatic Counsellor, Ambassador Tigran Seiranian.
During the exchange, both delegations expressed strong satisfaction with the current level of relations between the two countries, confirming that Italian-Armenian ties now stand at an excellent level. They reaffirmed their shared commitment to deepening institutional, political and economic cooperation, and to identifying new avenues to strengthen the partnership going forward.
A central theme of the talks was the activation and further development of inter-parliamentary relations, regarded by both sides as a strategic tool for parliamentary diplomacy, the joint handling of shared policy files, and the exchange of legislative best practice.
The Yerevan meeting coincided with a significant institutional development: the official establishment of the National Assembly's new Standing Committee on Foreign Relations. The committee is chaired by MP Sargis Khandanyan, with MP Maria Karapetyan as Deputy Chair — a body that will now play a central role in shaping and coordinating Armenia's foreign policy and in opening new direct channels of dialogue with international partners, among which Italy occupies a prominent place.
In the coming weeks, the official relaunch is also expected of the Armenia-Italy Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group within the ninth legislature of the National Assembly. In the previous term the group was chaired by MP Maria Karapetyan, well known in Italy for her fluency in the language and her studies there.
The parliamentary meeting is the latest in a series of high-level contacts that have marked an intensifying relationship since Ferranti took up his post in Yerevan in January 2025. Speaking on Italian Republic Day in June, the ambassador told President Vahagn Khachaturyan that Italy had become Armenia's leading trading partner among European Union countries in 2025, a relationship increasingly supported by five direct flight routes between the two countries and by growing cooperation in tourism.
Cultural and academic ties have deepened in parallel. Italy's Mechitarist Congregation, based on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni in Venice since 1717, houses the world's second-largest collection of Armenian manuscripts after Yerevan's own Matenadaran — a heritage Ferranti highlighted in July at the International Congress of Armenian Studies. University partnerships have also expanded, including a memorandum between Yerevan State University and the University of Milan, first signed in 2021 and now being broadened to cover fields such as biotechnology, archaeology, constitutional law and international relations.
Against this backdrop, the establishment of Armenia's new Foreign Relations Committee — paired with the anticipated revival of the parliamentary Friendship Group — points to a further institutionalisation of ties between Rome and Yerevan, with parliamentary diplomacy now emerging as a complementary track to the strong governmental, economic and academic cooperation already in place.
Carlo Coppola
