As we already informed, today the second stage of interviews for Armenia`s judge at the ECHR has been launched. The Competition Commission tried to contact one of the candidates Hakob Karakhanyan, but he informed about his refusal to take part in this stage. Afterwards, the Commission started the interview with advocate Vahe Grigoryan. He first presented hi professional activities. Answering to the question on why he wants to become Armenia`s judge at the ECHR, Mr Grigoryan said: “This will give me an opportunity to develop my career path, as well as be useful for the Armenian and European community in general”.
Constitutional Court President Gagik Harutyunyan stated that when last year Armenia`s judge at the ECHR was in Armenia, she announced that applications from Armenia are few, but the portion of successful applications is large. He wanted to listen to Vahe Grigoryan`s opinion on this, and the advocate answered: “There are several reasons, as far as I am informed the process of filtering in Armenia is being implemented on the bottom level, thus the applicants are not busy with unduly overloading the court”.
Human Rights Defender Karen Andreasyan got interested what are the main drawbacks which result in non-efficient protection of the rights of the society, and Mr Grigoryan objected to the question stating that as a candidate for the judge at ECHR he should speak on behalf of public interests, so he preferred to speak about the flaws of the state system. According to him the main problem of our state is the inefficient implementation of the right to freedom. “As a result the state does not have a trust of the people. Second problem is the huge lack of independence of the judicial authorities. Third problem is the absence of free market in Armenia, which affects the democracy”, he stated, also referring to the Constitutional reforms, which won`t solve the issue, as to him.
