Former Minister of Justice Davit Harutyunyan recapped the roundtable discussion under the title “Professional discussion on vetting and transitional justice”.

According to him, the initiative and the speeches given during the roundtable entail several questions.

“If the people initiating transitional justice view Armenia as an authoritarian state, which period is specifically a period of repression? Who are the victims and under what principle are they victims? What does the population expect from transitional justice? As a rule, the expectation is either restoration of justice or restitution or compensation. What will the results and the standards of assessment be? Will social and economic rights be taken into consideration? If not, why?”

Davit Harutyunyan recalled that in 2016, the European Union (without the participation of the authorities of the Republic of Armenia) launched an assessment, developing methods for assessment of public confidence in the judiciary.

“When the results were being presented, Head of the EU Delegation, Ambassador Piotr Switalski said something interesting. I am certain he has forgotten what he said, but I will remind him. He said the following: “Yes, public confidence in the judiciary is not at a high level. Nevertheless, it is higher than in several countries across Europe”,” Harutyunyan said.

Based on this, Harutyunyan asked the reason why there was an aspiration to introduce vetting and which countries Armenia is being compared with. After all, there is an European institution that conducts monitoring, and it would be interesting to see Armenia’s position.