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• Eka Beselia to attend PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights

  On May 18-19, Belgrade hosts the PACE Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee sitting to be attended by the Chair of the Legal Issues Committee, Eka Beselia.
  The agenda includes: report on Implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, Fighting organized crime by facilitating the confiscation of illegal assets, democratic approach to the issues of governance in European multinational States, proportionality issues concerning derogations under Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights and strengthening international regulations against trade in goods used for torture and the death penalty.
  Eka Beselia will deliver the report on the issues considered at the Venice Commission Democratic Election Council sitting on “New Threats of Rule of Law in CoE member States”. The Committee sitting will as well be attended by the Head of Serbian Delegation to PACE and officials of Ministry of Justice of Serbia.

• Eka Beselia participating in Public Forum dedicated to the judicial reform

  The Chair of the Legal Issues Committee, Eka Beselia participated in the Public Forum on “Judicial system of Georgia: Reform Outcomes and Perspectives” organized by the Coalition for Independent and Transparent Judiciary.
  In her speech, she noted that three stages of judicial reform shall be followed with the exact diagnosis and accurate planning of the fourth stage. “The Legal Issues Committee declared that the judicial reform and enhancement of the judicial system are main priorities. All the issues under the Committee competences are important but the priority is conferred to judicial reform continuation and support. Everything is comparative and we shall compare the current situation, where we are now to some other situation. Naturally, we see the dynamics and release the grave situation we were in, moving forward to progress but we do not put full-stop and state about accomplishment of the reform after these three stages. We continue the reforming within the system and monitoring of the process. Particularly important factor I consider is to make the exact diagnosis after three stages, to make accurate assessment of the results, of the gaps to be eliminated, enhanced, corrected and to accurately plan the fourth stage”.
  The Court is ready to see the real situation and along with the parties concerned make steps to enhance judicial system and increase independence thereof. “I am full of hopes for the process and believe that we are able in the shortest time to deal with the problems. It requires rational and correct decision-making in the forms and with the methods allowing obtaining optimal results. We are committed to it”.
  She thanked EU and USA for support of enhancement of judicial system in Georgia. The Chair of the Coalition, Ana Natsvlishvili; Chair of the Supreme Court, Nino Gvenetadze; Deputy US Ambassador, Nicholas Berliner and the EU Ambassador, Janos Herman also addressed the attendees.
  The forum concluded sundry panel discussions. E. Beselia participated in the discussion on Guarantees for Independence of Judges and spoke about efforts for creation of these guarantees, including: improvement of legal procedures of appointment of the judges, increase of social guarantees of judges, 3-year probationary period of judges, business-trip rules of the judges etc. She introduced the record in the draft Constitutional Changes regarding independence of judges.

  The Coalition introduced the study results providing reform analysis, overview of the latest tendencies in the judicial system and consideration of the issues related to selection and appointment of the judges, as well as probationary period and life-tenure appointment, number of judges and their specialization, their estimation and promotion, administration of the Court and management etc.

  The study is supported by the GYLA, TI-Georgia, Human Rights Training and Monitoring Center and Partnership for Human Rights.

  The forum was held by means of USAID-funded PROLoG implemented by EWMI

• Eka Beselia echoed the statement made by the President at the public consideration of the draft Constitutional Changes

  The Chair of the Legal Issues Committee, Eka Beselia echoed the statement made by the President at the public consideration of the draft Constitutional Changes and stated that the President tries to demonstrate that allegedly his authorities have been deprived due to the personal attitude thereto. “He reveals the situation as if upon direct election of the President he will have the guaranteed victory”.
  Even under the current Constitution, the authorities of the President fail to give the legal basis for direct elections. “The real situation is that in the event of direct election of the President, the candidate of the ruling political force “Georgian Dream” will win. I doubt that the incumbent President in the event of direct elections, has the chances for victory. We refuse the real possible outcome Georgian Dream candidate would achieve in case of the direct elections”.
  The direct elections are related to unjustified expenditures from the budget. “In the event of indirect elections, unjustified expenditures will be spared in the budget. The mandate obtained by the ruling political party upon the elections is binding implying change of the current incorrect and contradictive norms in the Constitution, change of the model we have today”. It is the system transition to the new Parliamentary model envisaging necessity of the rule of Presidential election.

• The sitting of the Regional Policy and Self-Government Committee

  The Committee considered the draft on Rule of Deprivation of Property Right for Necessary Public Need, introduced by the Parliamentary Secretary of the Government, Shalva Tadumadze. He spoke about the changes and elucidated the objective of the draft. The draft aims at improvement of the legislation to make property deprivation process more transparent, to determine lawful balance between interests of public and individuals, to improve legal regulations on expropriation, to make enforcement of law effective and clearly define compensation guarantees to ensure preliminary, full and fair compensation against deprived property and to allow purposeful use of deprived property for public needs. Existing legal regulations regarding expropriation and experience of Macedonia, Austria and Czech Republic were considered upon development of the draft.
  “We also considered expropriation related models of Great Britain and Germany taking the peculiarities for Georgia into account”. In case of particular circumstances when Georgia has legitimate necessity and right to deprive private property for public needs, the respective law shall have following characteristics: non-discriminative approach, adequate compensation, right to appeal, compensation calculation method.
  The respective changes are to be adopted to the Municipal Code to ensure expropriation procedures on local level – involvement of Municipality in detection of person concerned, expected implementation of works and/or project, update procedures, provision of public information and detailed inventory of expropriation property.
  The MPs expressed their opinions mostly concerning expropriation method, obligations of expropriators and legal and technical ways of solution. The Committee shared the draft on the principal level.

• The meeting of Tamar Chugoshvili with CoE Human Rights Commissioner

  “The human rights state in Georgia was very positively estimated”, - the Head of the Parliamentary Delegation to PACE, Tamar Chugoshvili stated after the meeting with the CoE Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks. 
  The report by the Commissioner on Georgia provided the recommendations, though as appeared after promulgation, the greatest part of the recommendations is already implemented. “Promulgation of the report revealed that the greatest part of the recommendations is already implemented. The recommendations envisaged the activities in terms of judicial reform. All the recommendations are already covered with the third wave of judicial reform”, - T. Chugoshvili stated.
  The Constitutional reform ongoing in Georgia also meets the recommendation, envisaging increased quality of independence of Prosecutor’s Office.
  “Within the Constitutional reform, we significantly increase independence of the Prosecutor’s Office and it meets one of the recommendations of the Commissioner. So, remarks expressed towards Georgia or recommendations are factually shared by the Parliament”.
  She invited the Commissioner to Georgia. The meeting was attended by the Chair of the Legal Issues Committee, Eka Beselia and the Resident Representative of Georgia to CoE, Constantine Korkelia.