Parliament official claims organisations asking court to repeal controversial law on transparency “lack transparency”

Givi Mikanadze, the Chair of the Georgian Parliament's Education, Science and Youth Affairs Committee, on Monday claimed out of 121 organisations that had submitted a constitutional lawsuit against a recently adopted law on transparency of foreign influence, “only 21” observed the “minimum standard for transparency”.

Mikanadze alleged the development “once again shows how deplorable the situation is” in the domestic non-governmental sector and how “non-transparent” it was.

Last week non-governmental and media organisations filed a constitutional lawsuit with the Constitutional Court, claiming that the law on transparency is not in compliance with the Constitution of Georgia. Based on the fact that this issue has now moved into the legal field, we wondered who these organisations are and to what extent the transparency of these organisations and the availability of information to the public are presented”, he said.

The Committee Chair noted the ruling party had conducted a survey of 122 organisations that had filed a constitutional lawsuit.

“One of these 122 organisations is a TV company, which falls under the responsibility of the regulatory commission, and therefore we did not study the issues related to this company within the scope of the research, but we studied [the remaining] 121 organisations”, he continued.

Mikanadze said some of the groups had “very vague information” about their donors and grants and specified information about completed projects but not ongoing ones.

The 121 organisations [that fell] within the scope of our research filed the constitutional lawsuit, and only 21 of them - that is 17 percent - have observed the minimum standard related to transparency and access to information. This once again indicates the deplorable situation in this sector, how non-transparent this sector is”, he added.

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.