A regular Cabinet meeting took place today, chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The Government approved the draft laws of the Republic of Armenia on making amendments in the Law on Ensuring the Activities, Services and Social Guarantees of Officials and related laws. The purpose of the package of the drafts is to harmonize the conditions of the right of judges to pension with the relevant decision of the Constitutional Court of 18.06.2019, as well as the definition of unified conditions for pension security of prosecutors and persons holding autonomous positions in the investigative bodies. The package of drafts proposes to define the unified pension conditions of judges, prosecutors, as well as persons holding autonomous positions in the Investigative Committee, the Anti-Corruption Committee, the State Revenue Committee by the Law on Ensuring the Activities, Services and Social Guarantees of Officials. Responding, Nikol Pashinyan noted. “The pensions of judges, prosecutors and investigators are increased. Here, too, we are setting a standard. You know that such issues are very sensitive, they have public sensitivity. When we create a system of social guarantees for judges, prosecutors and investigators, we create that system both for them and for you. We do it to provide the highest quality justice to the citizens”.

The Government approved the technical regulation on the safety of substitutes for tobacco products conditioned with the need to regulate innovative tobacco products in the market. According to the substantiation, innovative tobacco products, nicotine-containing products and substitutes for tobacco products currently on the market are not regulated, therefore, there are no mandatory requirements for their use and realization. The purpose of this legal act is to regulate the new type of product in Armenia (nicotine-containing products, tobacco substitutes), to establish mandatory requirements for marketing, production, transportation, storage, conformity assessment, which will regulate this area, reduce the risks to human health. Accordingly, the display of substitutes for tobacco products in points of sale in Armenia will be also banned.

The Prime Minister emphasized that the purpose of all these regulations is the protection of public health. "It is very important that we are showing political will, we are moving forward in this direction. And it is very important to state that we have equalized traditional tobacco with tobacco substitute products in the Republic of Armenia. And, yes, it's very important that we regulate with tax regulations so that they are also in the proper tax field, taxed properly. And the most important goal of this is to protect our public health.”

The Government made amendments to one of its previously adopted decisions. According to that, all the youth sports schools of the republic, state non-commercial organizations, community non-commercial organizations will be guided by the minimum standards of conditions necessary for engaging in physical culture and sports defined by the Government of the Republic of Armenia. Referring to the decision, Nikol Pashinyan noted that in the field of both sports and general education, Armenia cannot have schools that do not operate by state standards. "The issue is very important and again it deals with institutional accomplishment, because when we refer to the field of general education or physical education, it does not matter who is in charge of that school, those schools should operate according to the state standard."