On April 19, 2021, the Armenian parliament adopted amendments to the Law on Normative Legal Acts. The amendments were proposed by the Ministry of Justice in 2020, and among other provisions, they initially aimed at ensuring public consultation for the drafts developed by the parliament representatives. However, the final draft did not result in any improvements in the area of public participation.
Though the existing law sets mandatory public consultations for all legislative drafts, it mentions exceptions for the drafts developed by parliament deputies or factions. The 2019 CSO Meter research identified a number of issues related to the public consultations, and among other recommendations it called to develop mechanisms for mandatory public consultation of legislative drafts produced by the parliament.
The Ministry of Justice published the draft amendments in May 2020 for public discussion. The proposed amendments suggested to:
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extend the mandatory public discussion requirement to all normative legal acts (instead of legislative acts) and to the drafts produced by the parliament,
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set the procedure of public consultations for the drafts by parliament in the Constitutional Law on the Rules of Procedures of the National Assembly,
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dismiss the requirement of public consultations for the government decisions on declaring state of emergency or martial law, as well as draft legal acts on restrictions and measures to be applied during the state of emergency or martial law.
Further on, the draft submitted to the parliament was revised removing the provision about the extension of mandatory consultations to all normative legal acts and setting at least 3 days for public discussion of the legal acts on restrictions and measures applied in the state of emergency or martial law.
Although the parliament voted for the draft amendments in the first reading on March 3, 2021, the draft was further revised between the first and second readings. In particular, the provisions on mandatory public consultations for the parliament-initiated drafts and setting minimal timeframe for the drafts related to the state of emergency were taken out. On the contrary, the final draft adopted by the parliament mentioned that the legal acts related to the state of emergency or martial law are not subject to mandatory public discussion.
Thus, non-withstanding the positive move to increase the scope of public consultations and enforce them in the case of drafts produced by the parliament, the amended law in the end failed to address any gaps related to public consultations. It endorses the practice of adopting laws and decisions without any public discussion, as was often the case in 2020.