On January 27 at the winter plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Resolution 1643 (2009) “The Implementation by Armenia of Assembly Resolutions 1609 (2008) and 1620 (2008)” was approved. As it has been reported, the draft resolution was released by the Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe on December 18, 2008, and stipulated a sanction of suspension of voting rights of the Armenian delegation (see YPC Weekly Newsletter, December 19-25, 2008). The adopted text of this document did not provide for such a sanction.
Clause 10 of Resolution 1643 (2009) deals with the situation in the media domain. Thus, in item 10.1 the PACE “welcomes the proposals made with a view to ensuring the independence of the media regulatory bodies in Armenia and calls upon the authorities to fully implement the forthcoming recommendations of the Council of Europe experts in this regard”. Item 10.2 of the Resolution refers to the amendment to the RA Law “On Television and Radio”, adopted by the Armenian parliament on September 10, 2008, according to which the conductance of broadcast licensing competitions is suspended till July 20, 2010 due to the need to prepare the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting (see YPC Weekly Newsletter, September 5-11, 2008). With this item the PACE underlines that “the technical requirements for the introduction of digital broadcasting should not be used by the authorities to unduly delay the holding of an open, fair and transparent tender for broadcasting licenses, as demanded by the Assembly”.
