EU to continue supporting Government of Armenia and sector-specific reforms of the Ministry of Justice

Deputy Ministers of Justice Karen Karapetyan and Ara Mkrtchyan attended the third meeting of the EU-Armenia Justice Dialogue. In his speech, Karen Karapetyan indicated the importance of the platform for dialogue as a brilliant example of sustainable and effective partnership between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union in the justice sector.

In the first part of the meeting, Karen Karapetyan presented the priorities of the justice sector, the course of implementation of the 2022-2026 Strategy for Judicial and Legal Reforms, the 2019-2022 Anti-Corruption Strategy, as well as the sector-specific directions of the new 2023-2026 Anti-Corruption Strategy and the Action Plan arising from the Strategy and the upcoming programmes. In his speech, Ambassador Maragos highlighted the high level of co-operation with the European Union within the scope of the justice sector reforms, as well as reaffirmed the willingness of the European Union for expansion of the scope of support to the sector. In his remarks, Head of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Eastern Partnership Unit of the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement of the European Commission David Cullen highly appreciated the pretentious agenda for the implementation of sector-specific reforms and indicated a number of sectors by which the European Union is expressing willingness to support the Government of the Republic of Armenia with its entire toolkit. Cullen also attached importance to the close co-operation with non-governmental organisations during implementation of the reforms.

In their speeches, the civil society representatives attending the meeting touched upon the judicial-legal and anti-corruption reforms, raised the sector-specific problems identified by civil society organisations and discussed them with representatives of the responsible state bodies.

In the second part of the meeting, Karen Karapetyan presented the course of execution of the "Support to Justice Reforms in Armenia - Phase I and II" budget support agreements being implemented with the support of the European Union.

The assistance to be provided by the European Union to Armenia in the first Phase of the agreement comprises maximum EUR 27 mln (another EU 3 mln as additional assistance), and in the amount of EUR 9 mln (another EUR 2 mln as additional assistance) in the second stage. At the end of the meeting, agreements were reached to further deepen and expand the sustainable partnership that was established with the European Union years ago.