National Assembly (Armenia)

The National Assembly was originally established in 1918 and called the Armenian National Council, following Armenia's declaration of independence.[1] From 1938, the National Assembly of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was referred to as the Supreme Council of Armenia. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the adoption of the new Constitution of Armenia in 1995, the formation of the current National Assembly was established.

The National Assembly is a unicameral body. The National Assembly consists of at least 101 seats, but with additional seats allocated, it may grow to about 200 seats in extremely rare cases.[2] The President of the National Assembly is Ararat Mirzoyan.

According to a law adopted in 2016,[3] parties need to pass a 5% threshold and coalitions 7% respectively to be included in the distribution of mandates.

The election system reserves 50% of votes cast in favor of each party to be distributed via party lists. Out of these, four mandates will be assigned to national minorities first of all (provided they are included on party lists). A party list can not include over 70% of representatives of the same sex and its every four consecutive entries shall include members of both sexes.

Another 50% of votes received by each party is distributed among their territorial lists submitted in 13 electoral districts.

If neither party wins over 50% of mandates, a second round of elections is held. After the first round, the two best-placed parties participate in the second round. All mandates received during the first round are preserved. The party that wins the second round is given an additional number of mandates to reach 54% of all seats.

If any party or coalition wins over two-thirds of the mandates in the first round of elections, sufficient additional mandates will be distributed among all other parties to ensure that at least one-third of all seats are given to parties other than the winning one, which would result in overhang seats.

• Avetik Sahakyan 1 August 1918 – 1 August 1919
• Avetis Aharonyan 1 August 1919 – 4 November 1920
• Hovhannes Kajaznuni 4 November 1920 – 2 December 1920

• Levon Ter-Petrosyan 4 August 1990 – 11 November 1991
• Babken Ararktsyan 24 December 1991 – 27 July 1995

• Babken Ararktsyan 27 July 1995 – 4 February 1998
• Khosrov Harutyunyan 4 February 1998 – 11 June 1999
• Karen Demirchyan 11 June 1999 – 27 October 1999
• Armen Khachatryan 2 November 1999 – 12 June 2003
• Artur Baghdasaryan 12 June 2003 – 1 June 2006
• Tigran Torosyan 1 June 2006 – 26 September 2008
• Hrayr Karapetyan (acting) 26 September 2008 – 29 September 2008
• Hovik Abrahamyan 28 September 2008 – 21 November 2011
• Samvel Nikoyan 6 December 2011 - 31 May 2012
• Hovik Abrahamyan 31 May 2012 – 13 April 2014
• Galust Sahakyan 29 April 2014 – 18 May 2017
• Ara Babloyan 18 May 2017 – 14 January 2019
• Ararat Mirzoyan 14 January 2019 – present

• Babken Ararktsyan 1990 – 1991
• Gagik Harutyunyan 1990 – 1991
• Ara Sahakian 1991 – 1998
• Artashes Tumanyan 1991 – 1995
• Karapet Rubinyan 1995 – 1998
• Albert Bazeyan 1998 – 1999
• Yuri Bakhshyan 1998 – 1999
• Ruben Miroyan 1999
• Gagik Aslanian 1999 – 2003
• Tigran Torosyan 1999 – 2006
• Vahan Hovhannisyan 2003 – 2008
• Ishkhan Zakarian 2007
• Arevik Petrosyan 2007 – 2010
• Hrayr Karapetyan 2008 – 2009
• Samvel Nikoyan 2009 – 2012
• Samvel Balasanyan 2010 – 2012
• Hermine Naghdalyan 2012 – 2017
• Eduard Sharmazanov 2011 – 2019
• Arpine Hovhannisyan 2017 – 2019
• Mikayel Melkumyan 2017 – 2019
• Alen Simonyan 2019 – present
• Lena Nazaryan 2019 – present
• Vahe Enfiajyan 2019 – present

Current political representation in the National Assembly following the 2018 Armenian parliamentary election:

Party		Votes	%	Seats	+/–
	My Step Alliance	884,864	70.44	88	+83
	Prosperous Armenia	103,801	8.26	26	–5
	Bright Armenia	80,047	6.37	18	+15
	Republican Party	59,083	4.70	0	–58
	Armenian Revolutionary Federation	48,816	3.89	0	–7
	We Alliance	25,176	2.00	0	–1
	Sasna Tsrer	22,868	1.82	0	New
	Orinats Yerkir	12,393	0.99	0	0
	Citizen's Decision	8,514	0.68	0	New
	Christian-Democratic Rebirth Party	6,458	0.51	0	New
	National Progress Party	4,121	0.33	0	New
Total		1,256,141	100.00	132	+27
Valid votes		1,256,141	99.63
Invalid/blank votes		4,706	0.37
Total votes		1,260,847	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		2,593,140	48.62
Source: CEC

The National Assembly has eleven standing committees:

• Standing Committee on Defense and Security
• Standing Committee on Economic Affairs
• Standing Committee on European Integration
• Standing Committee on Financial and Budgeting Affairs
• Standing Committee on Foreign Relations
• Standing Committee on Health Care and Social Affairs
• Standing Committee on Human Rights and Public Affairs
• Standing Committee on Science, Education, Culture, Diaspora, Youth and Sport
• Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs
• Standing Committee on Territorial Administration, Local Self-Government, Agriculture and Environment
• Standing Committee on Territorial Integration

Ad hoc committees are special temporary committees established by the decision of the National Assembly to discuss certain draft laws, or investigate certain issues, events or facts and to submit conclusions to the National Assembly. The aim of these committees is to draw attention to exceptional cases that are not covered by the standing committees.

According to the Constitution of Armenia, Article 73 "If appropriate, interim committees may be established as prescribed by the law on the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly for preliminary discussion of certain draft laws or for submitting to the National Assembly opinions, statements on certain issues, events and facts". Following the consideration and definition in the Constitution the Law on Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly clearly defines all the issues concerning the add hoc committees. More particularly, according to the article 22 of the mentioned law, add hoc committees are created by the decision of the National Assembly. The decision should contain information relating to the tasks, terms and procedures of an add hoc committee, meaning that the committee should operate only in very strict limitations set to the spheres of its investigation, the resources it may gain access to and also to the timeframes. The ultimate reason for existence of such committees is to deliver a report on its finding during a session of the National Assembly. Based on these reports, the Deputy may create a draft resolution in 2 days and if agreed by the Lead Committee, the resolution may be included in the draft agenda for upcoming four-day session.

According to the new constitution of the Republic of Armenia (Constitutional Reforms), the functions of committees previously defined as ad hoc committees are divided into temporary and inquiry committees. As stated in article 107 of the new Constitution, temporary committees may be developed only by the decision of the National Assembly to discuss certain draft laws and acts of the National Assembly and present views or statements connected to the National Assembly.

Article 108 is about the inquiry committees of the National Assembly.

1. The inquiry committee should be formed if at least the twenty-five percent of the total number of parliamentarians present the demand, in order to acquaint facts of public interests to the National Assembly.

2. The National Assembly regulates the number of members of an inquiry committee. The places of the inquiry committees should be proportional to the number of faction's members. The chair of the committee should be the member of the parliament who presented a request.

3. If minimum one-quarter of an inquiry committee demands; state, local self-government bodies and officials are compelled to introduce to the committee required information regarding its remit, if the information is not classified as secrets protected by law.
All the other regulations concerning temporary and inquiry committee should be established by the Law on Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly[8]

According to the latest Constitutional Reforms the Republic of Armenia will have a parliamentary state governance system. This means that compared to the semi-presidential system the powers of the Parliament will be enhanced, an example of this is the right of oversight of the executive power of the republic which is and will be exercised by the Government (as of article 85 of the current and article 145 the new Constitutions). So, the Parliament will have more powers and functions; therefore, it needs more tools to exercise these powers and perform its functions. An inquiry committee is a great tool for the parliament to exercise oversight and that is why according to articles 107 and 108 of the new Constitution there is a differentiation between temporary and inquiry committees.

However, in late 2015, there was a concern relating to the powers of these committees as prescribed by the article 108 of the new Constitution. Edmon Marukyan, the only non-party Deputy of the National Assembly of Armenia, suggested an addendum to the point 3 of article 108. According to him, the addendum should prescribe that the inquiry committees should be empowered to demand state and local self-government body officials to be present in the sittings of the committees and provide relevant explanations. The improvement was suggested for the first time on September 11, 2015, during the session of the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly. By then, the suggestion received a positive feedback and the committee members stated that it could be approved on the constitutional level. However, the decision on the official proposal to the National Assembly was to include the addendum in the rules of procedure of the NA rather than in the Constitution.[9]

The international experience shows that giving such powers to inquiry committees is a common thing. Point 7 of rule 176 of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament states that "A committee of inquiry may contact the institutions or persons referred to in Article 3 of the Decision referred to in paragraph 2 with a view to holding a hearing or obtaining documents."[10] Even though it was prescribed neither by the Constitution nor the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly that temporary committees have the power to hold a hearing with the presence of state and local self-government body officials, there was such a case when the committee held a closed-door hearing. On October 23 of 2008 with the order of the President of Armenia, a temporary committee of experts was formed on obtaining facts and evidence on the incidents of March 1, 2008. So as to gain the necessary information the committee was given the tools typical to a real parliamentarian inquiry committee.

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