Rustam Badasyan presents in the National Assembly the amendments envisaged in the judicial system

"After having been appointed as a Minister, I undertook the development of strategies for judicial and anti-corruption reforms which identify serious concerns not only in the judicial but also in the law enforcement, public administration systems." Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia Rustam Badasyan stated this during the parliamentary hearings convened in the National Assembly today. It should be noted that the parliamentary hearing on "Making amendments and supplements to the Constitutional Law "Judicial Code" and discussion of the package of the related draft laws" was convened by the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly.

The Minister clarified that the decision to start the process from the judicial system is due to the fact that the judiciary is the guarantor of human rights and the key actor in the field of administration of justice. According to Rustam Badasyan, the development of the package envisaged by the Strategies has been carried out based on the principle of inclusiveness, public discussions have been provided in different formats, the Draft has undergone international expert examination and received the positive legal opinion of the Venice Commission.

Referring to the basic regulations proposed in the package, Minister Badasyan informed that the legislative amendments will result in clarification of the rules of judicial conduct and the grounds for disciplinary action, expansion of the types of disciplinary penalties, improvement of the procedure for bringing a disciplinary action against a judge, the regulations for verification of qualification of contenders for judge candidates, elimination of the requirement of having certain experience as a judge at the given court, necessary for the appointment as the chairperson of the court, detailed regulation of the performance evaluation of judges, the Constitutional Law "On the Constitutional Court" will be brought in line with the Judicial Code with regard to the rules of conduct, the age limit of the contenders for judge candidates will be lowered from twenty-eight to twenty-five, etc. As to the latter, the Minister emphasised that the Venice Commission, considering the issue related to the minimum age limit for judge candidates, has stressed that the European standards concern the merit-based and non-discriminatory selection and do not envisage a universal standard for age.

According to the Minister of Justice, reforms have been made in the laws on fight against corruption that will have a positive impact on the assessment of integrity of not only judges and judge candidates, but also other declarant public servants.

The speech was followed by a question-and-answer session with the stakeholders.