Today, the Council of Europe’s Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) published a new report on how Georgia has been following up on its recommendations on ensuring transparency of party funding.

The initial set of recommendations was given to Georgia back in 2011. They concerned incriminations (criminalization of corruption offences) and transparency of political funding. In 2013 and in 2015 GRECO already issued reports about the compliance of Georgia with these recommendations, and concluded that all of its recommendations on criminalization of corruption has been satisfactorily implemented, but seven recommendations on political funding had been implemented only partially.

In the report published today, GRECO concludes that no tangible progress has been achieved by Georgia as regards the implementation of the outstanding recommendations on political party funding. The pending seven recommendations remain partly implemented.

Therefore, the third evaluation round focusing on incriminations and the transparency of party funding in Georgia continues. GRECO asked the Georgian authorities to submit the information about addressing the outstanding recommendations on party funding by the 30th of September 2017.

However, GRECO has already started the next evaluation round for Georgia that focuses on preventing corruption among members of parliament, judges and prosecutors. A GRECO report evaluating the current situation in this field and providing a set of recommendations to Georgian authorities is to be published on 12 December 2016.