Georgian President asks Constitutional Court to repeal controversial law on transparency of foreign influence

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili on Monday asked the Constitutional Court to suspend and then repeal the controversial domestic law on the transparency of foreign influence introduced by the ruling Georgian Dream party and approved by the Parliament earlier this year.

For the first time, the President of Georgia is applying to the Constitutional Court of Georgia with a lawsuit. The lawsuit concerns the foreign influence transparency law, the so-called ‘Russian law’. The mentioned law is unconstitutional”, Giorgi Mskhiladze, the Parliamentary Secretary of the President, said.

“It contradicts Article 78 [Integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structures] of the constitution of Georgia. A number of norms of the law, which violate a number of basic rights guaranteed by the constitution, are also challenged in the lawsuit. With this lawsuit, the President requests the suspension of the mentioned law and its final cancellation”, he noted.

The law requires groups “considered to be an organisation pursuing the interests of a foreign power” - determined by more than 20 percent of their funding coming from abroad - to be registered in the public registry with the status and publicise their received funding.