Majority voices date of revealing Venice Commission’s report on constitutional draft

Parliamentary Vice Speaker Tamar Chugoshvili says the Venice Commission is expected to reveal its preliminary final report on the draft of the Georgian constitution on September 20-22.

She stressed the ruling party will make the document public.

Chugoshvili stated that the Georgian Dream ruling party believed the Commission’s conclusion over the constitutional reform would be positive.

The report will be about how much Georgia took the Venice Commission’s initial recommendations over the draft law into account,” Chugoshvili said.

The Venice Commission is scheduled to confirm its conclusion at its plenary session on October 6-7.

The ruling party has announced they intend to adopt the changes put in the constitution at the end of September, after the Venice Commission presents its final report.

Parliament's Vice Speaker stressed Georgia would wait for the final report of the Venice Commission on the draft of the constitution. Photo by Parliament of Georgia press office.  

The opposition also demanded the ruling team to wait for the final report of the Venice Commission before the approval of the bill.

One of the key demands of the opposition is moving to fully proportional elections from 2020, when the current draft reads the country will reject the majoritarian elections from 2024.

• The current state leadership launched a program to amend the constitution, changed by the United National Movement authorities in 2010, in 2013 as they believed the constitution caused controversies between state institutions.
• They renewed the process starting in 2016 and created a 73-member commission composed of MPs, NGOs, court representatives and experts to draft the changes.
• The ruling party stressed they would not adopt any of the changes if they were disapproved of by the Venice Commission.

 In its initial report the Commission gave mostly a positive assessment to the draft and advised the ruling team and the opposition to have a dialogue on controversial issues.

The controversial issues include the time of moving to the fully proportional elections,  the method of electing the president, a possibility of creation of election blocs and sharing of undistributed votes which are votes received by the parties failing in an election between the parliamentary parties.