How transparent is political party funding in Georgia?

Georgia has satisfactorily implemented all five recommendations of the Council of Europe regarding criminalisation of corruption offences to make political party funding more transparent, states a new report about political party funding in Georgia.

However the country achieved no tangible progress regarding implementation of several other recommendations concerning transparency of political funding.

Yesterday the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) published a new report about how Georgia had been implementing the Council of Europe’s recommendations on ensuring transparency of political party funding.

The report praised Georgia for fully implementing several recommendations but criticised it for not showing any progress in others.

The pending seven recommendations – out of fifteen in total – remain partly implemented,” GRECO concluded.

Notwithstanding this result, GRECO notes that improvements may be forthcoming, given that the State Audit Office and the Central Election Commission are preparing amendments to the Electoral Code and the Law on Political Unions of Citizens which are to be submitted to Parliament shortly – once the new Parliament and government have been formed following the parliamentary elections of October 2016,” the report said.

The initial set of recommendations were given to Georgia in 2011. They concerned incriminations (criminalisation of corruption offences) and transparency of political funding. 

In 2013 and in 2015 GRECO issued reports about the compliance of Georgia with these recommendations, and concluded that all of its recommendations on criminalisation of corruption were satisfactorily implemented, but seven out of ten recommendations on political funding were only partially fulfilled.

The new report published yesterday looked at the implementation of these remaining recommendations.

GRECO was established by the Council of Europe to monitor states’ compliance with the organisation’s anti-corruption standards.