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On February 17 the NA Speaker Samvel Nikoyan took part in the conference on the theme “Participative Democracy: The Role of the Civil Society,” which was organised by the EU Parliamentary Group. We are presenting Mr Nikoyan’s complete speech:

“Honourable parliamentarians, ambassadors, members of the Public Council, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

First of all I would like to express my gratitude to the European Union Advisory Group, for addressing this important issue that is the structuring of civil society in Armenia, and of course to all of you for being here today.

Some may think that this two-day meeting may become a duel between representative democracy, what is to say the legitimate representatives of the people of Armenia, our Parliament and participative democracy, our civil society representatives.

But I am not here to throw any glove on the floor neither to pick one up. There may be ideas, discussions, which will not like the opposite side, but the problem is to make their voice audible.

I strongly believe that both are complementary, and parliaments that successfully organise their interaction with civil society become more efficient enhance their legislative functions as well as the control over the government. In a few words they become better, practical and effective parliaments.

However, we must all do an effort, I fully agree with Mr. Simmons’ remarks and join the EU encouraging civil society to get better organised in order to speak with one voice on matters of state interest.

For this purpose civil society needs a public body to conduct its deliberations, come up with compromise solutions to express their opinion, ideally ahead of every legislative draft produced by the government and every parliamentary legislative initiative, just like EU progressive member countries do.

The idea of restructuring the Armenian Public Council and reform it into a State body fully representing our civil society should be seriously considered.

But I did not come here to lecture anybody, and even less to lecture our civil society or the Armenian Public Council and the NGOs.

I honestly think these two coming days should also serve to all of us to be self critical, and ask ourselves what we can do better what we can improve in our Institution or NGO.

The National Assembly of Armenia has rather a long and good experience of working with the structures of the civil society. The NA with the support of the EU Advisory Group has developed several tracks of interaction with civil society.

The National Assembly has a Memorandum of Cooperation with one of the networks of the Armenian NGOs, where more than 120 organsations are involved. It enables the NGOs to be actively involved in the elaboration of the laws, as well as for presenting the interests of different social groups and ensuring transparency.

Our delegation to EURONEST Parliamentary Assembly has established the healthy habit to conduct consultations with the National Platform for the civil society forum for the Eastern Partnership on a regular basis.

Their proposals for future reports are submitted by our members to the Assembly, their suggestions for amendments are also taken into consideration and in most cases submitted to the Assembly.

2 out of the 8 reports that are currently being drafted in the EURONEST PA are suggestions coming from our civil society representatives.

The latest EU-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee also involved a joint meeting with representatives of civil society.

Together with the EU Advisory Group we have had 2 successful parliamentary public hearings on the discussions of the RA Draft Law on Human Rights and Gender Equality and Equal Opportunities in the past two months.

Dear friends, as I mentioned before I want to start this seminar-discussions being self critical, and I must admit that the National Assembly also needs to move further in its interaction with civil society, despite of its good experience and multilateral interaction readiness. And in this direction we are ready to continue our works.

We need to define a natural way to organise our exchanges, the National Assembly needs to be in constant contact with civil society, and therefore we need to figure out a way to organise permanent access to our premises during working hours in a standardised way by civil society representatives fully in line with security requirements.

My only motivation is to make better the Parliament, I have the responsibility to represent, in the benefit of our country. If things go right it will be our country, our people who will profit from it, this is my understanding of public service and this is my understanding of my current responsibilities.

We should never forget specially in the public service, but I think the same can be applied to NGOs, that our current positions do not belong to us, they belong to the people, and we borrow them for a limited period of time, and it is up to the people, in the case of the Parliament every 5 years, to decide to whom they will lend these responsibilities.

We all need to work together to achieve a higher degree of democracy, because, and it is my personal belief, strong democratic institutions can only be achieved by democratic processes, fully in line with international standards, and this is the only way to increase our sovereignty and independence as a state and build a better country for our families.

Thank you for your attention.”