YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. The Cabinet approved the bill package on amending the constitutional law “On The Constitutional Court” and the law “On Ensuring, Servicing and Social Guarantees of Officials” and found the legislative initiative to be of immediate priority.

Minister of Justice Rustam Badasyan said at the Cabinet meeting that the bill envisages an early retirement mechanism for Constitutional Court judges exclusively on voluntary principle with maintenance of all social guarantees.

In particular, Constitutional Court judges who will resign by January 31, 2020 will continue receiving pension for as long as they would receive it while in office with the same rate and bonuses.

Constitutional Court judges who have been installed after the initiation of the 2017 January 17 ՀՕ-42-Ն constitutional law are not covered with this right.

The 2015 Constitution envisages that the nine Constitutional Court judges must be confirmed to office by parliament.

“Three are nominated by the Cabinet, three by the President and three by the General Assembly of Judges. “Basically it turns out that potentially this model can fail to be realized because members who were elected under the old procedure are holding office at the Constitutional Court,” Badasyan said. The minister added that this practice has been used in several countries. Particularly, Hungary and Poland used the early retirement mechanism, but on a mandatory principle – which was criticized by various Council of Europe bodies, that is why Armenia adopted the voluntary early retirement option, he said.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan noted that the Constitution stipulates a 12-year term for Constitutional Court judges and that the Constitutional Court president must be elected by the Constitutional Court judges for a 6 year term, and all these clauses have come into effect.

“These clauses are in effect entirely, but the clauses envisaged by these constitutional amendments are impossible to be realized at least until 2035. Factually, on one hand the authors said that they we have found the Constitutional Court model of our dreams, but on the other hand they did actions which won’t allow having this Constitutional Court of dreams until 2035”, he said.

He said that every ten years a question of Constitutional changes is raised in Armenia, and if this logic continues sometime a situation might exist for these clauses to change. “With this logic it will turn out that the in-effect Constitutional clauses in Armenia aren’t applied, and this is one of the biggest absurdities of the legal application practice. Now, we are enabling with this law that this problem gets solved,” he said.

The PM said this issue has been discussed with international organizations and that the bill still needs to be debated in parliament.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan