Friday, 27 June 2008
The RA Council on the fight against corruption met at the Office of Government, chaired by council chairman, RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.
The council has discussed amendments to RA anti-corruption strategy and Chapter One of draft 2008-2012 action plan (ASIAP), legislative changes concerning monitoring indices relevant to corruption-related offences, measures for narrowing the scope of immunity-endowed dignitaries, as well as question relating to Armenia's compliance with the GRECO commitments.
During the discussion of Chapter One of draft 2008-2012 action plan, the speakers mentioned that the said plan assessed the impact of the 2003-2007 anti-corruption strategy and action plan. The paper estimates the overall level of domestic corruption, the basic forms of manifestation thereof, the affected sectors and areas, the results of implementation of the 2003-2007 anti-corruption strategy and action plan, as well as the status of Armenia's commitments under international efforts for combating corruption.
Anti-corruption strategy implementation monitoring commission head, RA presidential adviser Gevorg Mheryan said that by corruption level indicators Armenia has comparative advantage over other CIS-member States while it lags far behind the Eastern European and Baltic States. As reported by Gevorg Mheryan, in the period under review, the ASIAP mainly focused on preventive measures, the improvement of the legislative framework applicable to new institutional entities emphasizing the need for ever broader public involvement and the role of monitoring actions. In the meantime, over fifty laws and regulations have been adopted under the 2003-2007 action plan. There have been signed and ratified several international conventions and agreements, the country has become member of prominent organizations providing for international cooperation, considerable work has been done towards the fulfillment of Armenia's international obligations in this field.
The head of the anti-corruption strategy implementation monitoring commission spoke in detail about the shortfalls and failures by mentioning that the program had failed to comprise clearly measurable tasks and was not a goal-oriented one. He further said that the system of coordination and monitoring is still in process of formation and is not fixed by operational mechanisms. An instruction has been issued to study the best practices available worldwide in the area of corruption assessment and monitoring and puck up the one most suitable to Armenia on the basis of which to carry out monitoring.
The council took note of the report on the performance of corruption-related offence monitoring action.
Concerning the fulfillment of the GRECO recommendations, it was noted that a conformity report on the Armenia's compliance with the first and second stage recommendations has been adopted at the GRECO 38th plenary session according to which 12 proposals have been accomplished already. Under the report, the Republic of Armenia has to provide additional information about the 9 partly fulfilled and 3 non-fulfilled proposals before December 31, 2009.
Concerning the legislative amendments aimed at narrowing the scope of immunity-endowed State officials, the council approved of the draft laws on the public notary service, special investigation service, public prosecution, the bills on invalidating some provisions of the RA election code in part or in full and on the new wording of part 5 of article 23 of the RA law on human rights defender.
