The Judicial and Legal Reform Strategy envisages increasing the efficiency of both administrative justice and administrative proceedings. The strategy envisages the establishment of the Administrative Chamber of the Court of Cassation, the expansion of the scope of administrative bodies and disputing their actions, the increase of the efficiency of appealing administrative acts, etc.

Iravaban.net spoke on the topic with advocate  Narine Abelyan.

– The Judicial and Legal Reform Strategy 2019-2023 envisages the abolition of the administrative procedural order for challenging the decisions, actions and inaction of the administration penitentiary institution. Won’t this change contribute to the increase of violations allowed by the administration? What do you think about this?

– As far as I have got acquainted with the strategy of those reforms, there is no expected positive result, no goal, and no reason to make a change, so it is very difficult to give an unequivocal answer. One thing is clear. Such incomplete formulations allow at least doubts about the effectiveness, necessity and suitability of the given strategy.

– The administrative court is one of the most overburdened. Will the application of written and simplified procedures in administrative proceedings have a significant impact on the prompt resolution of cases and the reduction of the burden on judges?

– I think that the burden of the RA Administrative Court within the framework of administrative proceedings can be reduced only by increasing the number of judges. I do not consider any other program realistic. There are only 24 judges in the RA Administrative Court. A written hearing may save time for a court hearing, but I do not think it will have a significant impact on the workload of judges and staff.

– On 9 February, the National Assembly adopted in the second reading and in full the amendments envisaged by the Judicial Code, by which a new chamber was created in the court of third instance. What impact will the establishment of an Administrative Chamber in the Court of Cassation have on administrative justice?

– The establishment of a separate chamber is welcomed, but I think it is too early to make predictions about the impact on administrative justice, as this circumstance is conditioned by the quality of actions taken in practice. Naturally, the positions of judges of the Administrative Chamber of the Court of Cassation will be mainly occupied by the judges of the Administrative Court of Appeal, due to which some of the judges of the Administrative Court will be transferred to the Court of Appeal.

In the event of a transfer of judges to another instance, the cases pending before the judges shall be re-assigned to other judges. In this regard, I am concerned about the postponement of the hearing in the first and appellate instances, due to the transfer of the incumbent judges to higher instances. In other words, when implementing this change, the above-mentioned circumstances should also be taken into account in order to avoid delays in the trial period.

– The New Code on Administrative Violations was not adopted, although it is considered a solution to the issue. The current Code was adopted in 1985. What problems does this cause in practice? In your opinion, why is the process of having a new code taking so long?

-Since the law is a living organism, it must also be changed from time to time, adapted to the current public relations in order to govern them effectively. Some norms, of course, are supplemented by necessity, but, nevertheless, the Code is not able to fully regulate today’s public relations. At this point, I remembered one contradiction, which is the result of a flawed regulation of the Code. We are talking about the Law on Drugs, which prohibits the sale of expired drugs in pharmacies, but the RA CODE ON ADMINISTRATIVE VIOLATIONS provides liability for keeping expired drugs. Of course, the offenses of possession and sale cannot be identified, in the conditions of which the flawed regulation and the negative consequences are obvious.

I cannot say why the process of having a new code is delayed, I assume that the problem is the priorities set by the authorized body.

– One of the directions of this goal fixed by the strategy is to increase the efficiency of appealing administrative acts. It is mentioned that, for example, it will be possible to limit the possibility of appealing the decisions of the RA Administrative Court in those cases, by which the amount of the penalty applied by the disputed administrative acts does not exceed twice the minimum salary.

Do you see a problem here? Or do you have another way to solve the problem, which will increase the efficiency of appealing administrative acts?

– I consider the restriction of the right to appeal the verdicts to be a gross violation of the right to apply to court, the right of access to courts. The state cannot restrict a person’s right to go to court to alleviate the burden of those same courts, in my opinion it is not logical. The only way I see to alleviate the burden is to increase the number of judges in court. If such a controversial settlement is adopted, I am sure that raising the issue of its constitutionality will arise soon.

As for the procedure for examining complaints through the administrative procedure, this issue also looks different on paper, and in practice it looks completely different. The issue of the training and professionalism of the pre-trial appeals bodies is first and foremost the issue that arises when appealing administrative acts by superiority.

Summing up, I would like to mention that any program, strategy, action plan should be discussed with experts in the field, so that both the initiators and we do not face undesirable problems in the future.