Completion of the EU project on judicial reform in Armenia

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Published: August 5, 2022

IRZ brought the EU Grant “Consolidation of the Justice System in Armenia” to a formal conclusion on 21 July 2022 with the high-level expert conference “Judicial Reform and Access to Justice” in Yerevan. The conference addressed the role of judicial reforms in the development of democratic structures and the challenges that emerge in these processes.

Andrea Wiktorin, EU Ambassador to Armenia, used her welcome address to stress the central importance of a reliable judiciary for the country’s economic development. Deputy Minister of Justice Yeranuhi Tumanyants pointed out that the Armenian government has already undertaken efforts in the field of judicial reform, for instance its decision to continue the judicial reform strategy, which was reached on the same day. A study on the public perception of the quality of the judiciary in Armenia was designed and commissioned as part of the project and is expected to yield important impulses. The findings were presented during the conference.

The project included three components targeting the Ministry of Justice of Armenia as well as the central judicial actors – so the Supreme Judicial Council, the Justice Academy, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Bar Association, the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption as well as the judiciary itself – which supported the fundamental judicial reform under the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement between Armenia and the EU.

In addition to extensive training components and the development of a court assessment programme, the last few months of the project focused on a number of legal reforms with contributions from the project.

The results of the project were presented to a larger audience at the conference, which was also attended by the cooperation partners Expertise France, the Latvian Court Administration, representatives of several embassies of EU states and other judicial projects and funding bodies, as well as law firms and companies. Ongoing implementation is now in the hands of the Armenian actors.