The Council of Europe’s Expert Council has published its opinion on Georgia’s “Foreign Agents Registration Act” (FARA).
Based on the document, “the measures envisaged in the Act will have a very significant impact on freedom of assembly and several other guaranteed rights. Therefore, in the view of the Expert Council, it would be advisable to withdraw the Act and refrain from taking any steps toward its implementation.”
The document further notes: “Many provisions of the Act certainly do not meet the legal requirements necessary to justify restrictions on rights guaranteed by the European Convention. More fundamentally, there are serious doubts as to whether even some of the provisions in the Act can be regarded as pursuing a legitimate aim.”
Additionally, the Expert Council highlights that the inevitable effects of the Act—such as preventing NGOs from seeking foreign support to achieve goals fully in line with European standards, imposing excessive obligations to disclose personal data, granting unlimited powers to request additional information, requiring complex record-keeping, and introducing disproportionately heavy fines—cannot be considered as measures necessary in a democratic society.
“In such circumstances, implementation of the Act would cause severe and unjustified harm to civil society in Georgia, would be incompatible with the wide range of obligations undertaken by a member state of the Council of Europe, and therefore would be entirely inappropriate. Accordingly, it would be advisable to withdraw the Act and refrain from taking any steps toward its enforcement,” the document concludes.
