YEREVAN, OCTOBER 6, ARMENPRESS. The Council of Europe has published a report on the assessment of the legal systems in member states. As “Armenpress” was informed from the press service of the CoE, the report outlines the main trends observed in 45 European countries.

The judicial system budget is composed of the budget of the courts, prosecution service and legal aid. In addition, the justice system may include, for instance, the prison system, forensic services or the refugees & asylum seekers service.

Armenia is among the states spending less than 15 € per capita on the courts: Albania (5 €), Armenia (5 €), Republic of Moldova (5 €), Georgia (6 €), Ukraine (6 €), Azerbaijan (11 €) and “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (15 €). The revenues generated by court fees are also among the very lowest – 0.84euro per capita - among the lowest. The share of court fees in the court budgets in Armenia is 16%.

Between 2012 and 2014, Armenia has increased the total budget of the courts by 33%, and 37% more budget is now allocated to the salaries.

Armenia is among 9 countries which devote 80 % or more of the court budget to the gross salaries of staff, together with Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Portugal, “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” and Ukraine.

Armenia is one of the few countries that implemented specific measures to promote gender equality within the judiciary through recruitment.

“Only Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, Germany, Montenegro, Norway and UK-England and Wales indicate that they apply specific rules in this regard. For example, in Armenia, parity between men and women is one of the considerations when drawing up the list of judge candidates, which must contain not less than 25 % of representatives of one gender. “

Armenia has a total of 226 professional judges, 8 per 100,000 inhabitants, an increase of 11% since 2010. The number of public prosecutors per 100,000 is 10.1, almost unchanged since 2010.

In Armenia, 77% of all judges are males, and 23% are females. The share of male judges is much higher than the European average of 49%. There are no female presidents of the courts in Armenia.

As refers to the number of days it takes for the court of 1st instance to take a decision on a criminal case was 135 days in 2014, against 78 days in 2010.

“In 10 states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Montenegro and Netherlands) a slow but continuous increase in the Disposition Time can be observed. This trend should be monitored but cannot be considered as worrying for the time being.