The Prosecutor General’s Office of Armenia has issued a statement on the advisory opinion of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the case of second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan.

In the statement, the Prosecutor General’s Office particularly stated the following: “On July 18, 2019, the Constitutional Court of Armenia applied to the European Court of Human Rights for an advisory opinion and set forth four questions.

The Grand Chamber of the ECHR didn’t see logic between the question subject to consideration and the circumstances of the specific case in the advisory opinion and unanimously accepted that it can’t answer the first two questions.

As far as the third question is concerned, the ECHR found that the case-law of the Court indicated that the use of the “blanket reference” or “legislation by reference” technique in criminal law was not in itself incompatible with Article 7.

As for the fourth question that concerned the criteria under Article 7 (no punishment without law) of the European Convention, the Grand Chamber of the ECHR has stressed what the Prosecutor General’s Office of Armenia has reiterated several times in its positions, stating that such assessments had to take account of the specific circumstances of the case (the principle of concretization) rather than be carried out in the abstract.

From this it follows that the advisory opinion of the Grand Chamber of the ECHR substantiates the fact that the actions taken by the criminal prosecution bodies to date have been and remain lawful.”