GRECO congratulates Armenia , but at the same time dоes not hide its concern
The Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption presented a report on criminalisation of corruption and transparency of political funding in Armenia. GRECO congratulates Armenia on substantial reform efforts; the evaluation round on these topics has been completed and all 19 recommendations implemented. The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body GRECO (Group of States against corruption) published a report about the efforts of Armenia to comply with the Council of Europe’s recommendations in the fields of incriminations (criminalization of corruption) and transparency of political funding. GRECO recommended to ensure that an independent and integrated mechanism is in place for the monitoring of the funding of political parties and electoral campaigns, and that it is given the mandate, the authority and the financial and staff resources to effectively and pro-actively supervise such funding, to investigate alleged infringements of political financing regulations and, as appropriate, to impose sanctions. GRECO notes that the Armenian authorities already at the time of the Compliance Report complied partly with the current recommendation as quite significant measures had been taken to ensure an adequate mechanism for the monitoring of political parties and election campaigns. Most notably,GRECO welcomed the non-partisan composition of the Central Electoral Commission and the fact that it had been provided with administrative sanctions. Moreover, the establishment of the Oversight and Audit Service as a permanent body with increased staff resources was also seen as an improvement. At the same time, GRECO was concerned about the fact that part of the work was to be carried out by auditors appointed by the political parties as they were not excluded from auditing the accounts of the party by which they had been appointed. "The Electoral Code (Article 28.4) has now been changed by Law HO-16-N and reads: “The supervisory competence of the auditors mentioned in this part shall not extend to the contributions of the factions having appointed them, to the calculation and expenditures thereof”. Consequently, the risk highlighted by GRECO in the Compliance Report has now been eliminated in the law. Against GRECO’s second concern about establishing a good balance between a speedy process and thorough monitoring, the authorities have stressed that the Oversight and Audit Service has the necessary staffing as well as a possibility to hire additional staff for up to one month’s time in case of need during elections. GRECO is not in a position to take a clear position as to the effectiveness of this new system as applied in practice. However, it encourages the Armenian authorities to regularly monitor the effectiveness of the system and concludes that the measures taken have established an adequate platform for monitoring political financing in Armenia in line with the intentions of the current recommendation, provided the law is implemented as foreseen by the legislation".- the Report reads. In view of the above, GRECO congratulates Armenia on the substantial reforms carried out to suitably address all nineteen recommendations of the Third Round Evaluation.That said, it needs to be stressed that several of the measures taken amount to the adoption of new legislation, which no doubt,need to be further scrutinised, and possibly adjusted by the authorities, in respect of their effectiveness as applied in practice. The text of the report is attached and can be assessed following the links below:
