Statement of the Anti-Corruption Coalition of CSOs of Armenia on the Draft of the New Code of Administrative Offenses and Draft Laws on Amendments and Additions to Related Laws

The Anti-Corruption Coalition of CSOs of Armenia (hereinafter – the Coalition) has studied the version of the “Draft of the New Code of Administrative Offenses (hereinafter – the CAO Draft) and draft laws on amendments and additions to related laws” (hereinafter – the Package of Drafts) posted on the official website of public discussions of draft laws of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia. In addition, 2 representatives of the Coalition participated in the public discussion of these draft laws organized on May 17, 2024, and present the following.

First of all, the Coalition welcomes another attempt to make changes and additions to the new CAO and the package of related laws, which dates back to 2012.

Since that year, for 12 years, enormous budgetary funds and credit and grant resources of development partners, amounting to several tens of millions of US dollars, have been spent, however, unfortunately, the problem remained unsolved. The unresolved nature of the problem, in our opinion, was also due to the frequently changing policies of the Ministers of Justice of the Republic of Armenia, insufficient strategic thinking and interest of the authorities of the day. A vivid testimony to this is the fact that over these years, numerous ministers responsible for this area have not sufficiently heeded the numerous proposals of civil society regarding changes to the CAO (including those presented by the organization representing our Coalition on October 30, 2017, May 24, 2018, June 16, 2023, during public discussions organized on the official website of public discussions of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia) and continued to use it in the law enforcement practice of the Republic of Armenia for about 40 years. Meanwhile, it contained numerous legal regulations that referred to the legislation of the former USSR, socialist property, socialist legal consciousness, etc., and, accordingly, the administrative bodies of the Republic of Armenia adopted initially void administrative acts aimed at the administrative responsibility of individuals and legal entities of independent Armenia, the appeal of which in the courts of independent Armenia led first to unjustified material and non-material (moral) damage to these persons, and then – to a noticeable overload of the courts.

In the presence of the mentioned gaps in this legislation, authorized officials were often guided not by specific legal provisions, but by discretionary decisions. It was also concerning that the numerous unjustified features established for the proceedings in practice extremely complicated the normal course of the implementation of functions, made inevitable the need to undergo additional professional training corresponding to each area requiring unjustified financial and human costs, etc. In such circumstances, authorized officials did not comply with the established legal regulations of administrative proceedings, exceeded the discretionary powers granted to them, as a result of which there was no culture of proper administrative proceedings in the apparatus of the systems of state administration, local self-government, and independent bodies of the Republic of Armenia.

As a result, the constitutional rights of individuals and legal entities of the Republic of Armenia to proper administration and fair trial were violated, which led to the expansion of administrative corruption as a new tool of systemic corruption.

In the context of the above, we believe that the circulating Drafts have attempted to eliminate the above-mentioned gaps in the CAO and related laws, some legal inconsistencies (collisions), to realize the main goal of the CAO Draft, namely – to provide for all administrative offenses and administrative penalties provided for them in one legislative act, to bring proceedings on administrative offenses in line with current social relations and the legal system, which deserves a positive assessment.

It is noteworthy that even after the completion of the public discussion of the draft laws on 05.10.2023, during the past 7 months, the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia, as the author of the draft laws, has not taken sufficient steps to publicize and promote them. As a result of such passive activity, only 8 representatives of the system of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia and 4 representatives of development partners, and only 8 representatives of civil society organizations participated in the public discussion of draft laws organized by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia on May 17, 2024, with representatives of civil society organizations. No media representative participated in the public discussion. Such a situation with public discussion testifies to the insufficient connection of constructive cooperation between the government and civil society, which in a country that considers itself democratic needs serious development and strengthening – increasing mutual trust and expanding the practice of the government developing the capacity of civil society organizations, involving them in public policy and delegating part of its powers to civil society organizations.

In addition to the above, the following substantive gaps have found place in the discussed Drafts, which either contradict the principles established by the new draft of the CAO, or insufficiently implement the concerns and goal-setting presented in the justification of the Drafts (a detailed analysis of this is posted on the official website of the Coalition).

The above allows us to conclude that, despite the fact that noteworthy changes and additions were made to the CAO Draft and the Package of Drafts, nevertheless, they will not contribute to the full realization in the country of the rights of individuals and legal entities guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia in the direction of proper administration, fair trial, and exclusion of discrimination.

Therefore, we propose to conduct serious professional discussions with representatives of civil society who have submitted proposals on the above-mentioned projects in a short time, to finalize the projects accordingly and submit them to the Government of the Republic of Armenia.

Governing Board of the Anti-Corruption Coalition of CSOs of Armenia Note:

The Anti-Corruption Coalition of CSOs of Armenia is a professional civil society structure founded on November 28, 2014, in Yerevan. Currently, the Coalition includes more than 50 civil society organizations, and the secretariat functions are carried out by the Armenian Lawyers’ Association.