PACE Committee Rejects Georgian Nominees to the European Court of Human Rights

The Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights, special committee of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, rejected at its meeting on January 24, three Georgia-nominated candidates to ECHR, citing lack of qualifications.

“The Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights assessed the list of the candidates to the Court in respect of Georgia,” the committee report said, referring to the candidacies of Giorgi Badashvili, Aleksandre Baramidze and Eva Gotsiridze.

“As not all candidates are sufficiently well-qualified, the committee recommends that the list be rejected by the Assembly and that the Government of Georgia be requested to submit a new list of candidates,” the committee report added.

Giorgi Badashvili, case lawyer at the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights, Aleksandre Baramidze, deputy justice minister since 2013 and Eva Gotsiridze, member of the High Council of Justice, were shortlisted from the total of 47 applicants by the 11-member state commission under the Ministy of Justice and chosen for nomination by the Government of Georgia.

The Committee on the Election of Judges interviewed the three candidates on September 29 and decided to pospone its decision “until a later date.”

The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights rules on individual or state applications alleging violations of the civil and political rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. The judges are elected by the CoE Parliamentary Assembly from lists of three candidates proposed by each member state for a non-renewable term of nine years. The tenure of Nona Tsotsoria, current Georgia-nominated ECHR judge, expires in January 2017.