Transparency International Georgia has conducted an assessment of the implementation of Georgia’s Association Agreement and Association Agenda with the EU between 1 September 2014 and 1 September 2015 as part of a project carried out by the Open Society Georgia Foundation. Our organization’s monitoring was focused on the provisions from the Association Agreement and the Association Agenda that are devoted to anti-corruption policy and civil service reform. The report also includes the results of monitoring conducted by partner organizations in the following areas: Judiciary; ill-treatment and torture; trade union rights and core labor standards; equal treatment; children’s rights.

The monitoring was based on the 2014 and 2015 national action plans approved by the Georgian Government.

Assessment of Action Plans

• The action plans included a number of important and ambitious reforms, for example:

• adoption of a new civil service law

• establishment of a verification system for the asset declarations of public officials

• adoption of a new national anti-corruption strategy and action plan

• Some of the activities in the action plans were formulated too broadly, making it difficult to assess their implementation, particularly as no indicators were provided

• Some activities from the 2014 action plan were not completed in 2014 but were not included in the 2015 action plan

• The assessment revealed that some activities that were included in the 2015 action plan had actually been completed in 2014

Assessment of Implementation

• The overall situation in terms of implementation is positive: The majority of activities were implemented either fully or partially

• Several important objectives were attained: A new Civil Service Law was adopted, a new National Anti-Corruption Strategy and Action Plan were prepared, the legislative amendments necessary for the establishment of the asset declarations verification system were passed.

• Preparing the draft of the Freedom of Information law is one important activity that was not completed within the established deadline

Recommendations

• Ensure timely completion of the remaining tasks from the two action plans (including the activities from the 2014 action plan that were not fully implemented in 2014 but do not appear in the 2015 document)  

• Provide assessment indicators, outputs and/or target numbers for every item on future action plans along with at least a quarterly breakdown of implementation timeframes  

• Prepare future action plans based on an analysis of the implementation of the previous ones and make sure that the tasks that were not completed are included in the next action plan