In 2022, the Government of Georgia considered 372 draft decrees at 47 meetings. None of these decrees have been made public. It has been impossible to obtain these documents through public information requests as well – the Government Administration failed to respond to any of our requests (47 letters) last year. 

For more than two years now, the Government no longer considers itself accountable to the public and makes decisions behind closed doors. With this approach, the Government not only loses public trust but also raises doubts that the goal is to conceal problematic decisions:

40% of government decrees issued in 2022 – 150 out of 372 – dealt with the transfer of state property to concrete entities, which contains clear corruption risks. These risks are strengthened considering cases of alleged unlawful transfer of state property identified by investigative journalists in the past.

In addition to giving a bad example to other public institutions, by failing to publish its decrees the Government violates several laws as well:

• The articles of the General Administrative Code on the availability of public information; 
• The Rules of Procedure of the Government with regard to uploading decrees to the website within 3 days at most; 
• The Government’s ordinance on proactive publication of information.

We call upon the Government Administration to abandon the harmful practice of concealing the decrees, fulfill the requirements of the law and publish all documents both on its official website and on that of the Legislative Herald, as well as to resume giving out public information upon request.