Minister of Justice of Armenia Rustam Badasyan says he welcomes the response of the co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for the monitoring of Armenia and assures that the Armenia will continue to not give in to provocations and solve the crisis in the Constitutional Court by ensuring the principle of rule of law. This is what Badasyan wrote on his Facebook page.

“So far, the Government and the Parliament have respected legal procedures to resolve the situation. Moreover, the authorities have requested the opinion of the Venice Commission on the mechanism for early retirement of judges of the Constitutional Court. According to European standards, the Venice Commission underlined that early retirements should be strictly voluntarily and that this principle needs to be observed. As co-rapporteurs, we will closely monitor that the Armenian authorities continue to act in this way, even if the objective of this mechanism, to uphold the spirit of the constitutional amendments of 2015, seems valid,” the co-rapporteurs said.