A meeting of the Anti-Corruption Policy Council of Armenia was held under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the PM’s office informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Pashinyan noted that the task at hand should be not to establish rules as traps, but rules that will help political parties operate in a legal framework.

“I think that what we are discussing now concerns the scope and field of party conduct, and in the future, amendments should be made to the Law on Parties, the law and regulations should stipulate that there should be bodies or officials in parties who are responsible for dealing with this,” said Pashinyan.

The head of state added that in the process of developing anti-corruption policies, they came to the conclusion that there should be officials in state government bodies who will be responsible for conduct and integrity.

“My suggestion is to think about making such changes to the law that the party’s charter stipulates that the party must have a person or body that will deal with the party’s code of conduct,” the Armenian premier emphasized, in particular.

According to Nikol Pashinyan, their task is not for parties to constantly commit violations, and for bodies to fine them and initiate cases.

“Our task is to contribute to parties carrying out their activities in the most civilized way possible, which does not always work out, and I assure [you] that it is not always out of malice that parties want to commit violations,” the Armenian head of state noted, and stressed the importance of carrying out respective awareness-raising in the abovementioned directions.