ArmInfo. An electronic system for granting citizenship will be introduced in Armenia.
The National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia approved amendments to the laws "On Citizenship" and "On State Duty" at its session on December 4.
Earlier, while presenting the documents, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Armenia Armen Ghazaryan noted that within the framework of the program, it is planned to create a single electronic environment where all cases related to citizenship will be fully presented. Currently, this process is carried out in paper form, which is associated with unnecessary costs and wasted time. The electronic platform will present all data related to both the granting of citizenship and its termination. With the help of the new platform, all requests to other structures involved in the process of granting citizenship or its termination will be carried out. We are talking about the State Revenue Committee, the Ministry of Defense, the Police, the National Security Service and others, which will operate on a single electronic platform.
As the Deputy Minister emphasized, an important component of the new program will be the issue of preserving the database. The fact is, Kazaryan continued, that maintaining paperwork requires additional efforts, and against this background, preserving data in electronic form is much more effective. The package retains the right of foreign citizens who have applied for citizenship to a one-time visit to the authorized body to submit an application and identify the applicants. In all other cases, operations will be carried out electronically.
The corresponding amendments are also being introduced to the Law on State Duty. Currently, a state duty of 1,000 drams is paid for obtaining Armenian citizenship, and the state duty rate is 25,000 drams when terminating citizenship. Both state duty rates have not changed since 1997. Taking into account inflationary pressures and technical changes, it is now proposed to increase the state duty rates to 50,000 drams and 150,000 drams, respectively. Refugees are exempt from paying state duty when obtaining citizenship.
Ghazaryan also said that, as a rule, the issue of granting citizenship is studied within 90 days, and the termination of citizenship - 180 days. He also cited statistics, according to which 7,800 people received Armenian citizenship in 2020, 2.5 thousand in 2021, and over 25 thousand in 2022. Moreover, in 2021, citizenship was terminated for 4,904 persons, in 2022 - 4,510, in 2023 - 3,654, and in the first 9 months of 2024 - 3,107.