REFORMS ON THE WAY TO EUROPE

The Government may shortly start forming a National Council and a Coordinating Commission under the National Program for implementing the EU-Armenia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. The National Program was elaborated on the basis of a governmental protocol dated April 29 2004. And now, 2 years later, due to the hard work of hundreds of specialists in various spheres, the Government has at last considered and approved this 700-page document. The documents aims to bring our country closer to European life standards. To get more details on this conceptual document, the largest for the independent Armenia, ArmInfo interviews Tigran Jrbashyan, Armenian-European Policy and Legal Advice Center (AEPLAC) Co-Director.

To work out the National Program, important structures were set up: a Coordination Council headed by prime Minister was founded, 24 working groups with involvement of the heads of agencies at relevant ministries and departments. About 150 specialists worked on the materials, including 50 experts that elaborated the program. The program is based on the technologies and the groundwork widely applied in the countries who have applied for EU membership. I'll mention at once that this program did not pursue any political goals. As to its technological essence and structure, the document is based on the principle of the so-called secondary European legislation.

The document is rather extensive. A great work has been done. Would you tell about the structure of the document?

The National Program is divided into 5 basic parts. The first, elaborated by the Foreign Ministry, concerns the program of reforms at the country's political institutions in accord with the Council of Europe requirements. The second part provides a thorough analysis of the social-economic differences between the EU member-states and Armenia. It also brings the situation characteristic to new EU member-states at the moment of applying for membership and to the countries at the stage of joining the organization. In this context, the Poverty Reduction Program economic forecasts on Armenia, are made for regions and compare how much compliant Armenia will be to the EU membership criteria in 2008 and 2015. The analysis is based on the so-called Copenhagen criteria i.e. on the criteria established by Copenhagen Treaty of EU member-states. The program has a deep context as to meet these criteria, deep understanding of problems is required alongside with the most serious attitude to matters.

What are the program's tasks in the economic sphere?

Regarding the economic policy, by 2009 the program aims to achieve conditions necessary for negotiations with the EU for a free trade agreement. The so-called European New Neighborhood policy gives such an opportunity. The policy implies a possible increase of a country status to the free trade agreement participant status depending on the success of a country. On the whole, the economic part reveals the key directions the government should concentrate its efforts in to bring Armenia's economic indicators in conformity with the EU requirements. The third part of the National Program is the broadest. It presents the economic, institutional program of reforms which the country needs to carry out by the second half of 2009. This part is divided into 24 chapters instead of 31 determined by the secondary European legislation. Thus, 3 chapters regarding defense, security policy and oceanic fishing were removed. Some of the chapters were united.

Well, the oceanic fishing point is clear, but why defense and security? - as I know European direction is a key component of Armenia's security and in defense we are actively involved in NATO political activities.

First, NATO is not a European structure, in principle. Second, the EU defense system, especially, its fast response forces, is just taking shape. The chapters of education and science and free service and capital flows have been merged, but each of the chapters has relevant subchapters: a general text with general forecasts and specific goals and relevant measures to be taken by 2009 and a table specifying the schedule of measures, the executives, the deadlines for submission of projects to the government and bills to the parliament.

What the fourth part is about?

It is about structures to be formed, their interaction system, their specific functions. New sub-divisions will be formed inside ministries and departments, who will be responsible for the implementation of the National Program. A basic staff should be formed within the government - this will be a poltiical and coordinating body - a National Council on European Integration. This council will also be responsible for the course of the program, for the conduct of regular monitoring and for the development of the next versions of the National Program.

Some countries have special departments and even ministries for European integration. Why did you reject this scheme?

There too the horizontal structure is not always very effective. A new bureaucratic structure will not be effective in Armenia. A new ministry implies horizontal relations between different ministries, while this problem concerns all departments from the justice ministry up to ecology, industry, agriculture, trade, finance and other departments. That's why we have chosen the vertical model with one governmental coordinating body led by the prime minister. This model was successfully applied by Estonia, a country having similar parameters with Armenia. We believe that the Estonian model of reforms is the best and most applicable to Armenia.

Will you form an infrastructure for serving these "European" reforms?

The fifth part of the program is exactly about the resources necessary for their conduct. It is very much important to set up a legal translation center - a governmental non-profit organization inside the Justice Ministry. The center will play a key role in the program: it will solve the problem of language barrier as the EU key requirement is that by the time of accession the EU legislation should be translated into the language of the acceding country. With the Justice Ministry being the founder of the center, all of its translations will be given an official status. Besides, the government will set up an information center on European integration, which will be a non-profit organization for ensuring public relations. This is very important as the public should understand and support the reforms.

How much in money will this program require till mid 2009 and what are its deadlines?

We have calculated the necessary sum by analyzing similar programs in other countries. We used certain indices, for example, per capital GDP, budget-GDP ratio, real population. As a result, we have got a preliminary sum of 40-50 mln EUR, which will be later specified. Today the EU is providding Armenia with 25-30 mln EUR a year. I think this sum will be enough. Still, as the basis of institutional reforms in Armenia, this program will certainly attract other donors too, including from the US. To date, the EU has spent 800,000 EUR on the program development.

The deadline for creating the above-mentioned infrastructures is Oct-Nov 2006, with specific measures to be launched by the end of this year.

Do you have technical support agreements with experienced countries?

I think these issues can be considered on an inter-governmental level. The EU has already said it is ready to support bilateral consultations under the New Neighborhood program. First of all, we can use already tested models concerning, say, reporting, action plan, monitoring, i.e. the very mechanisms we apply in implementing the program.

The readers may think that the success of the National Program will usher Armenia into the EU, will it?

Naturally, it would be naive to think that in 2009 Armenia will be admitted in the EU and we don't even set such a goal. The idea of the program is to bring Armenia as close as possible to the European standards, to make it a European country. Already today, while we were preparing the National Program, we noticed that they in the government began to gradually understand what the EU is, how it is regulated, what administration schemes it applies. In this context, Armenia should set a specific and realistic goal that will be supported by our partners and will result in Europeanization of all our life. This does not mean we must obligatorily join the EU, this is not an end in itself for us.

For example, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland are not EU members, but this does mean that they are less European than, say, Austria or the Czech Republic are. They are exactly as much developed in terms of governmental and public institutions, laws, level of state-business relations as the other EU members. I personally think that Armenia should, first of all, seek to become a European country with all characteristic instruments and elements and only then speak about attaining one or another degree of integration into the EU. Perhaps, it will be enough for us to get the customs union regime Turkey got in 1996 or we may join the general economic system Iceland and Norway are parts to. As regards the political aspect of Armenia-EU relations, it will be adapted depending on developments and progress in certain spheres.

First, we should finally normalize our internal situation so that the development of our country no longer depend on the activities of informal institutions. We must do it exactly now, while we are still in transition - or we can get into an institutional trap. But, in my personal opinion, we, Armenians, are idealists, we believe in ideals, in virtual values and historical experience, and the experience of the recent past says that this idea may unite us. I think the idea of Armenian-European state may lead our society to consensus.

From the viewpoint of foreign policy, the closer we are to Europe, the more complicated that will be for the EU to ignore Armenia's demands to open borders with Turkey, to actively involve it in various regional infrastructure projects, such as TRACECA and INOGATE. Moreover, the developments in this direction will make Armenia more predictable not only for the Western states. Our main partners, including Russia and Iran, would like to see Armenia as a predictable and effective country which develops independently from informal relations and institutions dominating in the society. Any talks about our supposed Asian mentality are groundless. Let's agree that, when Portugal joined the EU, it wasn't less Asian country from the viewpoint of its mentality. The same thing concerns Romania. Turkey is also an Asian country with high level of corruption and development of informal institutions, but it managed to show great progress in the last few years and many experts believe that the modernization of institutional systems is the very force driving it towards Europe.

Is Armenia the first new neighbor countries who has drafted such a program?

We are the first who have drafted a National Program based on the principles of secondary European legislation and the European Commission is already applying our experience as a example for other countries with similar situation.

Emmanuil Mkrtchyan, ArmInfo, May 26 2006