YEREVAN, JUNE 22, ARMENPRESS. The Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia Rustam Badasyan requested an opinion of the Venice Commission on three legal questions in the context of draft constitutional amendments concerning the mandate of the judges of the Constitutional Court on May 12. On 25-27 May 2020, the rapporteurs and the Secretariat of the Venice Commission, held a series of videoconference meetings with the representatives of the Constitutional Court, of three parliamentary factions including the opposition, with the Chairperson of the State and Legal Committee of the Parliament, with the Minister of Justice and the diplomatic community in Yerevan as well as representatives of civil society organisations, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Venice Commission.

''It should also be observed that the purpose of the current majority is not to alter these high democratic standards, by reversing and stepping back from the achievements of the 2015 reform and by introducing rules that would allow the majority to control the appointments. It appears, on the contrary, that the authorities’ objective is to ensure that the new provisions produce their effects and the composition of the Court reflects the democratic standards introduced by those provisions as soon as possible. This is a legitimate aim. The Commission acknowledges that, in context, the time period between the adoption of the amendments and their final implementation, which would take up to 20 years, is unusually and exceptionally long, and results in effectively frustrating the application of the 2015 amendments. '', reads the opinion of the Commission.

Referring to the Chairperson of the Court the Venice Commission underlined that under the current rules the Chairperson would remain in the chair for 17 years, longer than the term foreseen for judges under the new Constitution. This risks leading to a predominant role of the Chairperson and is not conducive to collegiality among the judges.

Also, the Commission takes note of the authorities’ claim that the election of the current Chairperson of the Constitutional Court, on 21 March 2018, under the provisions of the 2005 Constitution and only three weeks before the entry into force of the 2015 amendments, was contrary to the spirit of those amendments aiming, on the one hand, at guaranteeing more independence for the judiciary and for the Constitutional Court from parliament and on the other hand at enabling a rotation in the position of Chairman. In any case, he was elected when the new rules for the term of office had already been adopted for quite some time. His situation is therefore quite different from the situation of a Chairperson elected under the previous version of a Constitution at a time when it is not known that the term of office will be shortened.