The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe is organising a regional conference on 6 - 7 December 2017 in Tbilisi, Georgia, which will bring together around 100 mayors and local elected representatives from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus. Numerous newly-elected Georgian mayors are to take part in the event, as well as representatives of national associations of local authorities, civil society organisations and expert.

The aim of the conference is to enable peer-to peer exchange on good practices to promote and strengthen ethics, transparency and citizen participation at local level in these countries. Participants will address these questions through concrete examples of local initiatives that were implemented in 2017, by twelve local authorities from Armenia, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.

The conference will be opened by the Minister of Regional Development and Infrastructure, Zurab ALAVIDZE, the Mayor of Tbilisi, Kakha KALADZE, the Secretary General of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities Andreas KIEFER, and the Head of the Council of Europe Office in Tbilisi, Cristian URSE, as well as a representative of the European Union.

On the eve of the conference, 5 December 2017, a workshop on ‘Local initiatives: managing and communicating the change’ will bring together the mayors and project co-ordinators implementing initiatives on ethical governance.

In addition, on 8 December 2017, the Secretary General of the Congress will intervene at the 6th General Assembly of the National Association of Local Authorities of Georgia (NALAG).

The conference is organised by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities within the thematic programme “Strengthening institutional frameworks for local governance”, implemented jointly with the Council of Europe Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform, Directorate General of Democracy. This programme is funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe, and implemented by the Council of Europe, through the Partnership for Good Governance (PGG) 2015-2017 for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus.

Today, the Council of Europe’s Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) published a new report on how Georgia has been following up on its recommendations on ensuring transparency of party funding.

The initial set of recommendations was given to Georgia back in 2011. They concerned incriminations (criminalization of corruption offences) and transparency of political funding. In 2013 and in 2015 GRECO already issued reports about the compliance of Georgia with these recommendations, and concluded that all of its recommendations on criminalization of corruption has been satisfactorily implemented, but seven recommendations on political funding had been implemented only partially.

In the report published today, GRECO concludes that no tangible progress has been achieved by Georgia as regards the implementation of the outstanding recommendations on political party funding. The pending seven recommendations remain partly implemented.

Therefore, the third evaluation round focusing on incriminations and the transparency of party funding in Georgia continues. GRECO asked the Georgian authorities to submit the information about addressing the outstanding recommendations on party funding by the 30th of September 2017.

However, GRECO has already started the next evaluation round for Georgia that focuses on preventing corruption among members of parliament, judges and prosecutors. A GRECO report evaluating the current situation in this field and providing a set of recommendations to Georgian authorities is to be published on 12 December 2016.