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Venice Commission Secretary: â€œPACE suggested us to review the law of Azerbaijan on freedom of religious faith and conscienceâ€

27 June 2012 15:27 (UTC +04:00)

Answering the APA correspondentâ€™s question about the cooperation between the Venice Commission and Azerbaijan on legislative acts, Markert said recently PACE suggested them to review the law of Azerbaijan on religious faith and conscience.

â€œWe received this proposal about 10 days ago, but we canâ€™t proceed to analyzing the text because it has not been translated yet. I canâ€™t say anything now because I have had no chance to learn this draft law. Our experts will start work on the text as soon as it is translated. We are planning to express opinion on the above-mentioned draft law in Octoberâ€.

Thomas Markert said that previous opinions of the Venice Commission on the last two draft laws of Azerbaijan had a criticizing character and he hoped that Azerbaijan would take the recommendations into consideration.

â€œAs you know, we expressed opinion on the last two draft laws of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani parliament has already adopted one of them â€“ the draft law on political parties, but draft law on NGOâ€™s has not been approved yet. Recently member of our organization Latif Huseynov told us that an expert group would be established in Azerbaijan to discuss the state of these draft laws. This is an issue of Azerbaijanâ€™s domestic legislation, but I hope that this step will assist the adoption of this law in the parliament with taking our opinion into account. Earlier we reviewed the Election Code of Azerbaijan, but we have no such indication that Azerbaijan addresses us to express opinion. Our Commission is a legal organization, but not political. Therefore we can not bring pressure on any country or government. PACE addresses these problems through its Monitoring Committee and taking our opinions into consideration.â€