On June 28, Transparency International Georgia presented the Benchmarking Analysis of the Performance of the Parliament of Georgia – Based on the Declaration of Parliamentary Openness, in the framework of the project “Monitoring and Promoting Understanding of Georgia’s Open Parliament Action Plan”.

The report underlines that the Parliament should work towards enabling a culture of openness, making parliamentary information transparent and easily accessible, as well as enabling electronic communication of parliamentary information. This is crucial for the Parliamentary activities to be in line with the best principles and practices set out in the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness.

Based on the recommendations of TI Georgia, the Parliament of Georgia should:

• Drafting of the Code of Ethics for MPs and an effective monitoring mechanism;

• Improving of content and establishing uniform standards for explanatory notes to draft bills;

• Impose obligations to develop justifications for changes to the agenda during committee sittings;

• Publish MP questions;

• Completely and timely publish draft law findings of all committees, expert opinions and findings, reports by state bodies accountable to the legislative body and results of discussions on the parliamentary webpage;

• Temporary replacements during committee sessions should be possible only during cases of justified leave of absence;

• Create a thematically categorized video archive for plenary and committee sittings

• Make physical access to the Parliament building easier

The Declaration on Parliamentary Openness is a call to national parliaments by civil society parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs) for an increased commitment to openness and to citizen engagement in parliamentary work.

The purpose of the report is to benchmark the Declaration’s principles and best practices towards the practices of the Georgian state legislature and offer evaluations and recommendations.