To:

Olivér Várhelyi, EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement

Irakli Gharibashvili, Prime Minister of Georgia

Copy:

Carl Hartzell, Ambassador of the European Union to Georgia

On March 3, 2022, the Georgian government applied for EU membership. On March 10, EU leaders asked the European Commission to study Georgia’s application for EU membership. In the near future, the European Union will submit to the Georgian government a questionnaire that will serve as a basis for the evaluation of the country.

We, the signatory organizations, believe that the process of joining the European Union should be open, transparent, and inclusive. It is important to ensure the involvement of civil society in it. We would like to stress that civil society has valuable experience in assessing the current state of justice, the fight against corruption, and human rights in Georgia (Chapter 23 of the EU accession negotiations) using a similar questionnaire (see evaluation document https://bit.ly/3LUEYyh [1]).

With this in mind, we wish to ask you to make the questionnaire submitted to Georgia and the provided answers public, in order to enable all the stakeholders to be involved in the process and contribute to the path of European integration.

Signatory organizations:

1. Open Society Foundation
2. Partnership for Human Rights
3. Democracy Index Sakartvelo
4. Institute of Law and Policy Research
5. The Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics
6. Georgian Young Lawyers Association
7. Rights Georgia
8. Social Justice Centre
9. Caucasus Open Space
10. Center for Social Sciences
11. Tolerance and Diversity Institute
12. Union Sapari
13. Penal Reform International
14. International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy
15. Prevention for Progress
16. Institute for Development of Freedom of Information
17. Transparency international Georgia
18. Europe Foundation