The Council of Europe’s Expert Council has published an opinion on Georgia’s “Foreign Agents Registration Act” (FARA).
According to the document, “the measures provided for in the Act will have a significant impact on the freedom of assembly and several other guaranteed rights.” Consequently, the Expert Council believes it would be advisable to withdraw the Act and refrain from taking any steps toward its implementation.
“Certainly, many provisions of the Act fail to meet the legal requirements necessary for imposing restrictions on rights guaranteed by the European Convention.
More fundamentally, there are serious doubts as to whether the adoption of even some of the Act’s provisions can be considered to serve a legitimate purpose.
Furthermore, considering the inevitable effects of the Act’s provisions, which hinder non-governmental organizations from seeking foreign support to achieve goals fully consistent with European standards, as well as the excessive obligations for disclosing personal data, the unlimited scope of additional information requests, the burdensome requirements for maintaining complex records, and the excessive nature of potential fines, the measures included in the Act cannot be deemed necessary in a democratic society.
In such circumstances, the implementation of the Act would cause severe and unjustified harm to civil society in Georgia, would be inconsistent with the broad range of obligations undertaken by a member state of the Council of Europe, and would, therefore, be entirely inappropriate.
Accordingly, it would be advisable to withdraw the Act and refrain from any steps toward implementing its provisions,” the document states.
The Council of Europe’s Expert Council: It would be advisable to withdraw the “Foreign Agents Registration Act”
