We recognized provisions of some 160 laws as anti-constitutional - Gagik Harutyunyan (video)
The situation is extremely alarming in a number of countries in terms of constitutionality and constitutional crisis, Chairman of the Armenian Constitutional Court Gagik Harutyunyan said on Friday. Recently, he participated in the session of the Venice Commission and returned with good impressions. “I have participated in the sessions many times but never have I seen such a thing. This time the participants discussed the situation in Poland and Hungary. There are many problematic issues,” Mr. Harutyunyan said. He submitted a concept to the Venice Commission to rectify the situation, the Commission decided to start work on it and the start was announced in Armenia during a conference featuring representatives of international organizations. Gagik Harutyunyan says the constitutional crisis is primarily due to the low level of constitutionalization of public relations. There are other reasons, too. “The reasons are quite different. It is conditioned by political interference, partial realization of the basic principles of the legal state, lack of self-sufficiency of the Organic Law.” Constitutional crisis does not bypass Armenia. “The deviation between the Constitution and real life is very large today. We should not allow these metastases to develop independently. This can be done, first of all, on a constitutional level. The Constitution should be fully enforced in 2019,” he said. Many times we have seen the National Assembly pass unconstitutional laws. They are detected by lawyers and ordinary citizens during legal disputes and the Constitutional Court recognize these laws as anti-constitutional. Are there any mechanisms to exclude the anti-constitutional essence of draft laws while they are still debated in the National Assembly? “In recent years, we have recognized different provisions of some 160 laws as anti-constitutional,” Mr. Harutyunyan said.
