Our plans haven’t changed, but we take note of the declaration. This is what Minister of Justice of Armenia Rustam Badasyan told journalists today, touching upon the declaration by the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum.

The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, which consolidates nearly 1,000 civil society organizations of the European Union and the six Eastern Partnership countries, has adopted the declaration of the Annual Assembly 2019 which also addresses the crisis of the Constitutional Court of Armenia and calls on the Armenian authorities to quickly form a legitimate Constitutional Court.

Badasyan stressed that the declaration won’t change anything in the plans of the Ministry of Justice.

“I don’t think it’s not new that the representatives or main sector of Armenia’s conventional civil society share the position that the Constitutional Court is in a crisis. We have taken note of this statement. This is the opinion of civil society representatives, not the Council of Europe,” Badasyan said.

When asked what the Ministry of Justice will do to solve the crisis in the Constitutional Court, if the Court’s judges refuse to go on pension, Badasyan said the goal is to ensure mechanisms for integrity in the judiciary. When asked if the government has tools to prove that the steps aren’t pressure on the judiciary, the minister said the following: “We are sincere and are working openly with our colleagues. We are working closely with the Venice Commission and GRECO and are trying to reach a point where anti-corruption actions won’t be perceived in the context of independence of courts, and we’ve succeeded so far.”