Parliament Committee Chair: Gov’t will consider Venice Commission’s legal remarks on foreign influence law

Maka Botchorishvili, the Chair of the European Integration Committee of the Georgian Parliament, on Friday said the country’s Government would consider legal remarks on the domestic law on transparency of foreign influence by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and bring the legislative piece “into compliance with requirements put forth for us”.

Botchorishvili’s comments followed remarks made by Marija Pejčinović Burić, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, who on Wednesday expressed disappointment that the Georgian Parliament had adopted the law without awaiting the opinion of the Commission.

Botchorishvili said in case of non-compliance of the law with European standards it should be “evaluated and considered legally”.

I hope the evaluations and recommendations will have a legal nature, and will not be as general and unarguable as we have heard so far. This would give us the opportunity to actually see what is inconsistent with European standards”, she said.

The legislative piece, which calls for 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, was supported by 84 MPs in the 150-member lawmaking body on Tuesday, with 30 voting against.

It requires groups “considered to be an organisation pursuing the interests of a foreign power” to be registered in the public registry with the status and publicise their received funding.