Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO), the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption monitoring body said in its new report that it “acknowledges” Georgia’s “considerable progress in the fight against corruption,” but calls on the Georgian authorities to continue implementing the reforms aimed at preventing corruption among parliamentarians, judges and prosecutors.
GRECO positively assesses the introduction of a monitoring mechanism for submitting asset declarations by public officials including parliamentarians, judges and high-level prosecutors and recommends the application of the new rules to all prosecutors.
Noting “measures taken to prevent corruption among the members of parliament and increase accountability of their work,” GRECO recommends “the publication of all draft legislation, and developing an enforceable code of ethics/conduct,” as well as the mandatory disclosure of parliamentarians’ conflicts of interest, “in order to monitor and determine when and how personal interests of MPs might influence the decision-making process.”
With respect to the judiciary, GRECO recommends “reforming the recruitment, promotion and transfer of judges, introducing an objective and transparent system for the allocation of cases (e.g. via random assignment), defining more precisely disciplinary offences, and limiting immunity of judges to activities related to their participation in judicial decision-making (“functional immunity”).”
GRECO welcomed the recently initiated reform on de-politicising the prosecution service and recommended additional measures to “to further reduce the influence of the government/parliamentary majority on the appointment procedure of the Chief Prosecutor and on the activity of the Prosecutorial Council.”
GRECO also recommends regulating the recruitment and promotion of prosecutors as well as case management and internal instructions, and reviewing the disciplinary regime applicable to prosecutors.
The Georgian authorities will have to submit GRECO with information regarding the implementation of these recommendations by late June, 2018 at the latest. GRECO will assess the response in the second half of 2018.
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