On 9 October, the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe has released its opinion on the Georgian amendments to the court system which were adopted in September 2020, expressing worries that the Georgian parliament did not wait for its assessments, reported agenda.ge. 

“The Venice Commission was willing to assist the Georgian authorities in reforming the system of the appointment of Supreme Court judges in line with European standards and meeting the domestic calendar. However, owing to the extremely limited amount of time it disposed as a result of the belated opinion request, the commission could not but limit the scope of its analysis of the draft amendments to the examination of whether its previous recommendations had been met in the draft amendments under consideration,” read the statement of the Commission.

The recently released opinion emphasised that the draft amendments go in the right direction by removing the vote by secret ballot and by providing that each vote must be accompanied by written reasoning that will be made public. However, critical remarks were made, most notably that the candidates should be ranked according to the scores they have obtained during the evaluation procedure. In addition the Commission said that to provide for a judicial appeal against the decisions by the High Council of Justice of Georgia (HCoJ, which is responsible for the selection of candidates) “not to select a candidate judge, it is further necessary: to provide for the disclosure, together with the vote and the reasoning, the identity of the member of the HCoJ who cast the vote.” The Commission also said that the requirement for non-judge candidates to have passed the judicial qualification examination should be reconsidered and that only “the specialist of distinguished qualification in the field of law” may be non-judge candidates for the Supreme Court. 

It should be noted that a few days earlier the spokesperson for EU’s external affairs Peter Stano also expressed his regret that the Georgian parliament did not wait for the opinion of the Venice Commission before passing the judicial reform law. The chair of Georgia’s parliament Archil Talakvadze said that a decision had to be made before the final plenary session of the 9th convocation of the Parliament. The move was heavily criticised by the opposition representatives in Georgia’s parliament (Caucasus Watch reported).