On 5 March the Justice Ministers of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Lithuania sigend a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the sphere of Justice. The RA Minister of Justice Hovhannes Manukyan and the Minister of Justice of the Republic of Lithuania Juozas Bernatonis signed the Memorandum. The parties agreed to cooperate in different spheres.
During the briefing Hovhannes Manukyan mentioned that among other issues they had discussed with his Lithuanian counterpart the issues of anti-corruption fight and introduction of the probation service.
Talking about the Anti-Corruption Council the Minister said that it would be an advisory body. “In this respect, the Council has no executive functions and the right to take normative decision. Which means that basically it is just a body, which will form the policy and submit relevant recommendations to the competent state bodies and the National Assembly,” Mr. Manukyan said.
Referring to the concern that the Council will not give tangible results he said, “Everything depends on what pace will be given to these works, what are the short term and long term problems will be set. It is really very difficult to predict the results that we may achieve after one, two or three years. However if we do not have positive results, it means we had not worked well and we have responsibility before the public,” the Minister said.
Answering to Iravaban.net’s question, Mr. Hovhannes Manukyan noted that the theme referring to anti-corruption fight was widely being discussed in media in the recent years, “I certainly would not like to turn our briefing to the discussion of corruption problems, but it seems we are moving forward in that way. However we have had many discussions on the problems, specifically about the complaints of the CSO sector representatives, and tried to explain our point of view. But it is difficult to say to what extend we managed to clarify it to the public. Naturally, I do not expect that everyone will be satisfied with our solutions and approaches. But whatever we have admitted was considered as optimal for the moment and will try to lay down such a procedure for the competition, which will enable to involve the NGOs of this sphere. Whicjh means to involve the organizations that are concerned with the problem and are really experienced, and which are able to provide good ideas to the Advisory Body, the Council for the development of correct policy,” said the Minister.
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How the Prime Minister “closed” the Anti-Corruption Council “topic”
