EU grant “Consolidation of the Justice System in Armenia”: second Steering Committee Meeting

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Published: July 27, 2021

On 12 July 2021, the second Steering Committee Meeting for the EU grant “Consolidation of the Justice System in Armenia” took place in Yerevan. IRZ has been leading this project, which aims to improve the quality of the justice system in Armenia, since June 2020, alongside the French organisation “Expertise France” and the Latvian judicial administration.

The meeting, which was held in a hybrid format, was attended by the German and Armenian project managers and those responsible for the EU delegation in Armenia, as well as representatives of key players in the Armenian justice system, including Deputy Justice Minister Kristinne Grigoryan. The aim of these regular steering meetings is to present the developments and progress of the project and to discuss them with the partners.

Once the meeting had been opened by Gonzalo Serrano de la Rosa, Head of Cooperation of the EU delegation, who emphasised the importance of the project as a central building block for EU cooperation with Armenia, team leader Peter Gjortler gave an overview of the past few months of the project, focussing in particular on the formal restructuring of the project schedule, which had taken place in consultation with the partner authorities.

Afterwards, the long-term experts Arman Zrvandyan, Gohar Hakobyan and Otilia Pacurari presented the activities carried out and the results already achieved. These include, for example, recommendations on simplifying administrative procedures, expert opinions on modernising the code of civil procedure and an analysis of standards of integrity among public prosecutors. In the area of further training, a comprehensive analysis of the existing further training system of the Judicial Academy was provided, allowing, among other things, the training methodology to be optimised and targeted curricula to be developed on this basis.

During the subsequent discussions, those involved in the project praised the successful cooperation, which was already bearing fruit. The Armenian partners were satisfied with the results achieved so far, and the success of the meeting therefore represented an important milestone for further implementation. Thanks to the establishment of the project locally, the opening of the project office in spring 2021 and, in particular, the permanent presence of foreign long-term experts in the country, the project can now be carried out under almost normal conditions despite the pandemic. The committed project team has a busy second project year ahead of them.