In an urgent opinion published late on Tuesday 21 May, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission “strongly recommends” that Georgia’s law on the transparency of foreign influence be repealed, as “its fundamental flaws will involve significant negative consequences for freedoms of association and expression, the right to privacy, the right to participate in public affairs as well as the prohibition of discrimination”.
These are all fundamental rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights.
Referred to by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Venice Commission regrets that the Georgian Parliament did not wait for its opinion before adopting the law last week.
This Russian-inspired law requires the media, NGOs and other non-profit organisations to register as pursuing the interests of a foreign power if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad.
It triggered massive protests and a veto by the President of Georgia, Salomé Zourabichvili.
However, the government’s Georgian Dream party should be able to muster enough votes in Parliament to override this veto.
For the Venice Commission, the government’s adoption of this text “has left no space for genuine discussion and meaningful consultation in open disregard for the concerns of large parts of the Georgian people”.
It concluded: “This manner of proceeding does not meet the European requirements of democratic law-making”.
Link to urgent opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/cap (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)