Council of Europe anti-corruption body: Georgia achieved “limited results” in implementing recommendations on transparency of party funding

The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body GRECO published a report on December 19 looking at how Georgia has implemented the recommendations on dealing with corruption offences, and specifically on the transparency of party funding.

Those recommendations were provided back in 2011 by the CoE.

In the previous report published in February 2016, GRECO concluded that no tangible progress had been achieved by Georgia in the implementation of the recommendations on political party funding, and the pending seven recommendations remained only partly implemented.

The new report says that one more recommendation has been implemented since 2016.

“Some further progress appears to be underway, but in general limited results have been achieved by Georgia as regards the implementation of the recommendations,” reads the report.

The recommendation that was considered satisfactorily implemented is related to ensuring that in-kind donations are properly identified and accounted for and membership fees are not used to circumvent the rules on donations.

However, recommendations on revising the existing legislation in the area of political finance, establishing a standardised format for the annual financial declarations to be submitted by political parties, taking further measures to prevent the misuse of all types of administrative resources in election campaigns and increasing the limitation period for administrative violations of party and campaign funding regulations remain partly implemented.

GRECO hopes that the new amendments to the Law on Political Unions of Citizens and the Electoral Code which have been drafted by the Ministry of Justice will have the potential to address the pending recommendations.

The anti-corruption body notes the important progress that has been achieved by Georgia in almost seven years since the adoption of the Evaluation Report.

In particular, in ensuring that an independent mechanism is in place for the monitoring of political party and election campaign funding, as well as information on the income and expenditure of political parties is made public in accessible manner.