Georgia to Choose New Strasburg Court Candidates

TBILISI – The Georgian government will choose new candidates for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. Three candidates will be chosen by a special government comittee. Then the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will approve one of the three candidates. 

In January, 2017 the ECHR rejected all three candidates that were presented by the Georgian government for the position of Georgia’s representative. The Strasbourg Court could have chosen from Eva Gotsiridze, Alexander Baramidze or Giorgi Badashivili, for the position, but the Court rejected all three candidates and asked the government to re-launch selection procedures.

“The Council of Europe has fairly detailed regulations and rules regarding the selection of candidates. I am sure that this time there will be no questions about the issue and the European Council will be able to choose one candidate out of presented three,” Tamar Chugoshvili, Deputy Parliament Speaker said.

Parliamentary opposition decries the lack of transparency in the selection process. Opposition party United National Movement (UNM) believes that the rejection of the candidates in January is the “shame” of the government. Akaki Minashvili from the UNM said, “It was shameful, that Georgian candidates were disapproved and the Justice Minister and the government are responsible for it."

Parliamentary minority Movement for Freedom-European Georgia hopes that government will complete the process correctly this time. “We hope the government will manage to conduct the selection process of the candidates properly and that the process will be transparent,” Gigi Tsereteli, member of the European Georgia said.

By Thea Morrison