June 12, 2023

To the members of EaP CSF Compliance Committee
Ana Otilia Nutu, co-chair of the EaP CSF Steering Committee
Irina Sukhy, co-chair of the EaP CSF Steering Committee
Mikayel Hovhannisyan, Member of the EaP CSF Steering Committe
Ana Furtuna, Director of the EaP CSF Secretariat
Ani Kojoyan, Director of the EaP CSF Secretariat
Boris Navasardyan, President of Yerevan Press Club

Dear colleagues,

With this letter, Yerevan Press Club expresses its indignation and protest over the violations of basic procedural norms found in the activities of Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum’s Armenian National Platform that affect the status and rights of our organization.

I wish to remind you that in May 2022, YPC resigned its ANP membership due to a procedural violation found during the elections of the CSF National Coordinator. Notwithstanding, our organization had confirmed its status as a CSF delegate and had continued its participation in the Forum’s activities in various formats.

According to the information retrieved from ANP partners, Yerevan Press Club’s status as a CSF delegate was duly acknowledged when establishing the quorum to vote of no confidence in the ANP national facilitator on June 9, 2023. The YPC representative, however, has not been notified that, despite YPC’s ceased membership, it was still eligible to vote and has thus refrained from having any impact on the decisions made in an organization that Yerevan Press Club is no longer a member of. Another reason for such a decision was that during ANP’s most recent meetings earlier this May, YPC’s eligibility to vote has not been addressed by the participating members when discussing the agenda for the June 9 meeting.

We firmly insist that the procedural norms directly related to our participation that have been violated must be observed. They should have either excluded YPC’s vote while determining the quorum or duly informed our organization of our eligibility to vote.

Unfortunately, this is not the first gross procedural breach that has been committed and it ultimately casts doubt on the legality of ANP’s decisions and activities of the past year and beyond.

Yerevan Press Club hereby demands that one of the following acceptable procedural resolutions be applied with regard to the quorum and agenda of the meeting of June 9, 2023.

• Either our organization is altogether excluded when establishing the quorum, or the statement of the voting results and the final decision be revised accordingly.
• Or a new voting be organized with all participants, including YPC, being duly notified.
• Or, as a last resort, the precedent of May 10, 2022, be utilized wherein in a dispute (still ongoing), the non-participating members were given another chance to vote. This resolution, as our organization later emphasized, is far from perfect, but can be viewed as an acceptable compromise resolution.

With kind regards,

Seda Shiganyan

Yerevan Press Club’s Representative at EaP Civil Society Forum