During its June 9-10, 2015 session the Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter: the Committee) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (hereinafter: the PACE) recommended “by a narrow majority, the candidature of Mr. Armen Harutyunyan, over that of the candidature of Ms. Liana Hakobyan, as the most qualified candidate”[1] for the position of a judge to the ECtHR in respect of Armenia”.

The Human Rights NGO ''Europe In Law Association'' (ELA) carried out monitoring missions during the two national contests for the selection of three candidates for the position of a judge to the ECtHR on behalf of the Republic of Armenia held in September-October, 2014 and January-February, 2015 respectively, and presented its findings over breaches and incompliance of the selected candidates with Article 21 of the ECHR in its respective reports published in 2014 and 2015.

In particular, during the 2014 selection process, there were actions manifestly demonstrating favouritism towards Mr Armen Harutyunyan, the candidate recommended by the Committee, proved facts of plagiarism on behalf of this candidate, as well as well-substantiated information on the inadequate level of his other important professional and moral qualities.      

Furthermore, during the contest held in 2015, the authorities, in contrast to the contest of 2014, refused to made the application packages submitted by the contestants accessible to the observers. Hence, the report on the 2015 contest was based on limited amount of information, separate fragments of which were only possible to verify later, whereas some are still in the process of verification. However, the information at hand, as well as the observations of the activities of the national Selection Commission, the interviews held with the contestants, as well as the results of studying a number of publications, enabled the observers to qualify the two contests in its two reports as non-transparent (failing to meet the requirements of the PACE Resolutions nos. 1366(2004) and 1646(2009)), as well as made reference to issues in regard to the apparent incompetence of the selected candidates for the position of an ECtHR judge.

In particular, in the reports, mention was made about the following:

• The National Selection Commission was not a politically independent and impartial professional body, as the majority of its members were either controlled or significantly influenced by one political party (the ruling Republican Party of Armenia), the aim of this being to ensure the election of Armen Harutyunyan for the position of an ECtHR judge; 
• The list of the three candidates for the position of an ECtHR judge, was  drawn as a result of serious violations of the transparency and fairness of the contest;  
• All the three candidates failed to meet the requirements of Article 21 of the ECHR.  

In regard to candidate Mr. Armen Harutyunyan, among a number of other facts, it has been mentioned that he has plagiarised works of at least two Russian authors – S. Kashkin and B. Topornin, by means of copying in translation from the books edited by these two authors without having made proper references to the originals, literally copying and pasting numerous pages into his books on the European Union Law published in 2005 and 2011. This proof of academic dishonesty, even if we discard the rest in the mentioned reports, leaves no room for considering this candidate as conforming to the criteria for an ECtHR judge.  

The failure to reject the list submitted by Armenia was also directly contrary to the requirements of the PACE ( Resolution 1366 (2004) as modified by Resolutions 1426 (2005), 1627 (2008), 1841 (2011) and 2002 (2014)), as Ms. Liana Hakobyan does not possess any knowledge of the second official CoE language (according to her declaration in her CV) and this list should in no way have been considered by the Assembly.  

 We are deeply concerned, that the only visible reason why this list is passed to the consideration of the PACE is that the Committee was unable to secure the 2/3 of the votes in order to be able to reject this list of the three candidates, and the reason for submitting the recommendation it had actually submitted to the Assembly was perhaps the very fact of it failing to meet this high threshold of votes. Therefore, being short of any other choice the Committeed had to recommend one of the candidates.   

We, the undersigned, while not considering ourselves as experts of the PACE procedures and rules, firmly believe that procedural limitations, due to which the list of the candidates, without proper regard to the requirements of Article 21 of the ECHR, was presented by Armenia appeared on the agenda of the Assembly, must not be decisive during discussion of such a fundamental issue as is the election of an ECtHR judge. 

We call on the Assembly to reject the list presented by Armenia fully, as, in fact, no choice was offered to the Assembly by the latter. 

We believe that no one must be allowed to hold this important position in this Court commonly referred to as “Conscience of Europe” by means of availing oneself of the procedural and formal rules without complying with the moral and professional requirements of Article 21 of ECHR, thereby manifestly undermining by his/her past the reputation and legitimacy of the Court before the people of Europe. Judges to this Court must be elected indeed and not be imposed under such circumstances.   

Lousineh Hakobyan, President of the Human Rights NGO ''Europe In Law Association''

Levon Barseghyan, Chairman of the Board of ''Asparez'' Club of Journalists

Transparency International Anticorruption Center NGO

Tigran Yegoryan, Advocate

Moushegh Shoushanyan, Advocate

Lousine Sahakian, Advocate

Yervand Varosyan, Advocate

Armen Feroyan, Advocate

Ara Zakaryan, Advocate

Liparit Simonyan, Advocate

Tigran Muradyan, Advocate

Nona Galstyan, Advocate

Tigran Hayrapetyan, Advocate

Avag Lalayan, Advocate

Narine Rshtuni, Advocate

Irina Hakobyan, Advocate

Gevorg Samvel Harutyunyan, Advocate

Kima Saryan, Advocate

Karapet Badalyan, Advocate

David Gyurjyan, Advocate

Karen Hakobyan, Advocate

Davit Karapetyan, Advocate

Tirair Vardazaryan, Advocate

Christina Gevorkyan, Advocate

Nikolay Baghdasaryan

Araks Melkonyan, Advocate

Souren Kristasatryan, Advocate