On 16 December, the European Union disbursed € 9 million in grants to support justice reforms in Armenia, reported aysor.am.

The EU's decision followed a positive assessment on the progress of implementing the Judicial & Anti-Corruption Strategies, macroeconomic stability, public financial management and state budget transparency. The assistance package is aimed at contributing to strengthening the integrity and accountability in the justice system, improving access to modern and quality judicial services and establishing a specialised Anticorruption Court in Armenia. The EU assistance program is complementary to other instruments of technical assistance and capacity building support such as with the German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation IRZ, as well as in the Eastern Partnership region with the EU-Council of Europe Partnership for Good Governance and various EU4Integrity projects.    

“I welcome today’s announcement on this very important budget support disbursement for Armenia. Once again, both EU and Armenia peoples and institutions come together to deliver on good governance and rule of law reforms. The European Union and its Member States are contributing to increase accountability of the judiciary and prosecutorial bodies and push for zero tolerance towards corruption in Armenia. We share the challenge, and we can only succeed together,” stated the EU ambassador to Armenia Andrea Wiktorin. 

“First, I want to highlight that this disbursement of 9€ million was the first tranche of the justice reforms budget support program with an overall amount of 30€ million. It is important to reaffirm that the judicial and anti-corruption reforms remain the priority directions for our government and we are happy to state that the good progress achieved during this one year has also gained appreciation from our European partners. We are thankful to the European Union for continuous support and effective cooperation in the justice sector,” stated Armenia’s Justice Minister Rustam Badasyan.

According to the EU's justice reform plan for Armenia for the period 2018-2022 it is important to ensure the capacity of those involved. Of equal importance is tackling one of the major shortcomings in the justice sector, the lack of hard evidence and evidence-based reforms. Currently, most of the reforms happening in Armenia tend to be “principle based” rather than “evidence based.” Reforms based on general principles tend to be effective at the early stage of sector reform however, after passing initial phase of development the problem of internal contradictions arose.

The efficiency of justice was also highlighted as a problematic issue in the country. The workload of Armenian judges persists as an overarching problem affecting the quality of judicial decisions and often leading to prorated trials. The quality of judgements was also not always up to standards. The majority of judges were not trained on how to write highly qualified decisions to show why or how they have reached a particular opinion in the case. In most criminal and civil, and some administrative cases, the judges just mention the evidence in the case, insert the provisions from the law and declare their decision without proper justification/substantiation on why that particular law was applied in that particular way to those particular facts. There was also a clear need to intensively invest in technology in the area of justice and judicial activities in Armenia to increase effectiveness, transparency and accountability and to build a culture of independence and exemption.

The EU concluded that: 1) the adoption of necessary legislation was not followed by effective implementation and that there was a lack of commitment to reforms; 2) the necessary solutions in Armenia’s judiciary tend to be adopted without proper policy and financial analysis and evidence; and 3) that there was no broader agreement over the necessary steps for deeper reform, which raised concerns over lack of political will in the country.