Armenia Changes Citizenship Application Procedure

The government of Armenia is proposing to shorten the timelines for the consideration of applications for citizenship or the termination of citizenship. The draft amendments to the existing Law on Citizenship have been prepared by the Ministry of Justice and were made available today on the unified website for legal acts publication.

According to the current Article 29 of the Law on Citizenship, applications related to citizenship issues are considered within a six-month period. This duration is fairly long and often leads to complaints from applicants, stated the justification of the draft.

In its place, the new law proposes to establish a three-month period, equating to ninety working days. To this end, only the negative conclusions presented by the Police of Armenia will be submitted for consideration by the Citizenship Issues Commission.

Under the existing law, after receiving the conclusion from the Interdepartmental Commission on Citizenship Issues, the Prime Minister presents a proposal to the President of Armenia within one month regarding granting citizenship, denying it, or terminating citizenship, along with a draft decree.

The authors of the draft law note that in practice, the issue of nullifying the presidential decree often arises, which can only be done by the president. However, since in this case the decree was adopted based on the Prime Minister's suggestion, it is necessary for the Prime Minister to be able to modify his proposal, which is not provided for by law.

“Therefore, it is suggested to regulate this issue by law, granting the Prime Minister the authority to amend his proposal and submit a new one to the president,” state the authors of the draft.

Incidentally, the Law on Citizenship was adopted in 1995. Initially, a six-month period was established for granting citizenship and revoking citizenship.