Public Defender: goal of transparency bill is “legitimate”, although it can be achieved by changes to legislation

The Georgian Public Defender Levan Ioseliani on Thursday said he believed the goal of the bill on the transparency of foreign influence, reintroduced by the Parliamentary majority, was “legitimate”, although noted this goal could be “achieved by making other kinds of changes to legislation”.

The Public Defender’s Office commented on the resubmission of the controversial bill, retracted last year following the public protests, which calls for the registration of non-commercial legal entities and media outlets in the country as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they derive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad.

In the statement, Ioseliani stressed that the above-mentioned “legitimate goal” could be achieved without “disproportionately interfering with the right to association, which should not be manifested in stigmatising organisations and undermining the dignity of people”.

He pointed out that by making relevant changes to the Law of Georgia on Grants and modifying the eAIMS database, it would be possible to “easily achieve” the legitimate goal of increasing the transparency of foreign aid flows and the accountability of recipient organisations.

The Public Defender cited negative evaluations by OSCE/ODIHR, the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the Venice Commission and the UN Special Rapporteur.

The Constitution of Georgia states that the constitutional bodies shall take all measures within their powers to ensure the full integration of Georgia into the EU and NATO. Accordingly, the Parliament should not adopt any legal act that might endanger the implementation of Georgia's constitutional aspiration”, Ioseliani stressed.

He also pointed out that the proposed draft law would create the basis for collecting and making public “a large amount of personal data” about persons related to organisations, which “may violate the right to privacy”.

Ioseliani expressed “full readiness” to hold consultations with the authors of the bill “in order to bring the initiatives into compliance with human rights standards”.