Georgia’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has announced that it will immediately halt its participation in the assembly after the plenary voted to impose strict conditions for ratifying the delegation’s credentials. Among the conditions is a rerun of the contested October 2024 parliamentary elections, which Georgia’s governing party, Georgian Dream, is accused of rigging, and the release of all political prisoners detained at ongoing pro-EU protests in the country. According to the resolution, which was passed on January 29 by 114 votes to 13 with seven abstaining, should the conditions be met, the assembly would revisit the ratification of the Georgian delegation’s credentials in April.
The resolution also deprived delegation members of certain rights during the probational period, including membership in PACE election monitoring committees, holding positions in the assembly and representing the assembly. Minutes after the assembly’s vote on the resolution, which took place in Strasbourg , Tea Tsulukiani, vice speaker of the parliament and member of the Georgian PACE delegation, announced the decision to withdraw. Tsulukiani called the assembly’s conditions “unfair and unfounded”, and said that to demand new elections “encroaches the sovereignty of our country”.
“We believe that as long as completely unfair and unjustified blackmail against the government elected by the Georgian people continues, no evidence or facts are given, the discussions are biased and offensive to the population of our country, the participation of our parliamentary delegation in the assembly has no meaning,” she said in justification of the delegation’s walkout.
Tsulukiani, not wanting to admit personal defeat, appears to be attempting to spin PACE’s decision as a win for Georgia. She stressed that the country was still a member of the Council of Europe and that it would soon re-join PACE, but “only after the unfair attitude towards the Georgian state and people changes, the blackmail stops, and every official or unofficial decision-makers as well as forces behind them duly understand that such a pressure on the Georgian government elected by its population will fail to make the government take any anti-Georgian step”.
Another delegation member, GD MP Mariam Lashkhi, described PACE’s conditions as “unrealistic and unjustified”, stating that a “temporary suspension” of Georgia’s Parliamentary Assembly delegation would be in place “until a more equitable approach is established”. “If their attitude changes, we will return to PACE,” said Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, adding that the decision to leave PACE had “no significance” for Georgia. Some GD officials claimed that PACE’s provisional recognition of the Georgian delegation’s credentials still constituted recognition in some form, and therefore extended to recognition of the legitimacy of the Georgian Dream government.
PACE president Theodoros Rousopoulos said he “regretted” the Georgian government’s decision to withdraw from the assembly, stating that it “jeopardises the dialogue that could help to advance democratic standards in Georgia”. Swedish MP Boriana Åberg first challenged the credentials of the Georgian PACE delegation on substantive grounds on January 27, exactly 26 years after PACE unanimously voted the Black Sea country into the Council of Europe in 1999, and the then Georgian PM, Zurab Zhvania, famously declared “I am Georgian, and therefore, I am European.”
The challenge comes amid the crisis over GD’s legitimacy in the Georgian parliament following the contested October vote which GD is widely accused of rigging, with domestic and international observers citing mass electoral violations. Four pro-Western opposition factions which won seats in the parliament refused to accept the results, declared GD’s majority and newly formed parliament to be illegitimate and unconstitutional, and renounced their mandates.
The wave of civil unrest which followed the contested vote intensified on November 28 when the newly re-elected Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would be suspending its EU accession bid until 2028, a move much of civil society view as an abandonment of the country’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations in favour of closer ties with Russia. On the streets of Tbilisi that evening, tens of thousands of pro-European demonstrators were met by riot police armed with tear gas and water cannons. Over 400 were forcefully arrested in the nightly protests that followed, with many experiencing brutal mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement.
Repression against civil society and GD critics continue to mount, with those detained at protests being given years long sentences on charges of participation in group violence. The PACE Monitoring Committee, to whom Åberg’s challenge was referred, stated in its draft resolution on January 28 that post-election developments in Georgia, “including violations of freedom of assembly and expression and the crackdown on the opposition and civil society”, contradict the country’s membership obligations to the Council of Europe.
The committee’s resolution proposed that PACE ratify the Georgian delegation’s credentials but on certain conditions. As per the full list, the GD government is obliged to announce new, “genuinely democratic” parliamentary elections; release all political prisoners; end police brutality and human rights abuses; end the misuse of legal proceedings against protesters, journalists and civil society leaders; revoke the “foreign agent” law; and, resume the European integration process “in line with the European aspirations of the Georgian people”.
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Georgia suspends participation in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly
