ArmInfo.Head of the Armenian state Serzh Sargsyan in his speech from the PACE tribune touched upon corruption scandals involving European officials and the ongoing value crisis in the Council of Europe. "In recent years, Armenia has witnessed an unprecedented value crisis in the Council of Europe, when the style of the work of some irresponsible MPs, to put it mildly, contrary to the main mission of the Council of Europe, has seriously damaged the credibility of the organization," Serzh Sargsyan said on January 24.
The President noted that since Armenia became a member of the Council of Europe, Armenia was fully responsible for fulfilling its obligations and respecting the value orientations of the structure. However, as a result of the activities of a number of CE officials, a large European family faced, perhaps, the biggest challenge in its history, when cases of receiving bribes by PACE deputies and facts of unfair voting were revealed.
According to him, due to politically biased and scandalous reports, resolutions adopted since 2014 with respect to Armenia, the public of the country sharply revised its attitude towards PACE. At the same time, as Sargsyan expressed confidence that the disclosure of corruption phenomena will eradicate the vicious practice, which inspires hopes for restoration of confidence in the organization.
The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Pedro Agramunt, implicated in the "Caviar Diplomacy" of Azerbaijan, applied on October 6 to resign. "Today, for personal reasons, I decided to leave the post of chairman in PACE", - wrote Agramunt in his microblog on Twitter. Thus, he stopped the procedure of his impeachment, which was scheduled for October 9. A member of the Armenian delegation to PACE, Samvel Farmanyan, reacting to the resignation of Agramunt, wrote on his Facebook page: "For a long time, being de facto dismissed from the post of PACE head, Agramunt resigned: Thus, PACE shows signs of recovery, which is directly proportional Azerbaijan's discontent with this structure and Aliyev's threat to leave the Council of Europe."