Speaker Papuashvili: If you choose legal route, you must comply with court rulings

“When you choose to pursue a legal route, you must comply with the court’s procedures,” the Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, Shalva Papuashvili, has stated.

Papuashvili was asked to comment on information released by the ISFED, which stated that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has commenced a review on the merits regarding the asset-freezing cases of five non-governmental organisations.

As Papuashvili noted, these organisations are lawbreakers who lack any respect for the rule of law.

“It is entirely their right to appeal to the courts. As you know, several organisations have appealed to both the Constitutional Court and the Strasbourg Court. The issue here is that when you choose to take a legal route, you must comply with judicial procedures, something these organisations are failing to do.

Specifically, they petitioned the Constitutional Court to suspend the law pending a final ruling, but the request was rejected. Their subsequent appeal to the Strasbourg Court also failed to block the law’s enforcement. Therefore, if they claim to respect the Strasbourg Court or the Constitutional Court, which is why they appealed to them in the first place, they must abide by their rulings. Neither Strasbourg nor the Constitutional Court of Georgia suspended the law during the review period, which means they are legally obligated to comply with and fulfil the law. Instead, we see these organisations routinely breaking the law; they show no respect for the rule of law, democracy, or public order, all of which rely fundamentally on legal compliance and enforcement.

Thus, the main conclusion we must draw is this: we are dealing with lawbreakers who are actively encouraged in this lawbreaking by foreign funding. We know that, alongside breaking the law, these organisations refuse to register in the transparency registry. Their donors embolden them. Far from cutting off funding because they are breaking the law, they are actually increasing it, thereby encouraging lawbreaking in Georgia. This is a deeply outrageous move by the donors,” Papuashvili stated.