PACE and Venice Commission organized the Regional Parliamentary Conference in Tbilisi - Preventing and Responding to the Misuse of Administrative Resources during Electoral Processes: the Role of National Parliaments.

It is noteworthy that Georgia, being the CoE presiding country, hosts this Conference for the first time. The Vice Speaker, Kakhaber Kuchava opened the Conference with the welcome speech overviewing 20 years of Georgia-PACE cooperation.

He noted that election of Georgia as the CoE presiding country is the greatest responsibility and honor for us and thus, Georgia is committed to contributing to CoE activity and diversity. As to the topic of the Conference, the use of the administrative resources for the electoral processes constitutes the challenge responded by various countries through various approaches and mechanisms. This Conference is also important in terms of the exchange of international practice and visions.

“Our Government, in terms of the electoral processes, aims to ensure the free elections based on the legal principles. In this regard, we have undertaken various measures including harmonization of our legislation with the EU standards”, - he stated.

The PACE Member, and the Member of the National Assembly of France, Ms. Marie-Christine Dalloz also addressed the attendees. She dwelt on importance of cooperation of the PACE and the Venice Commission and noted that the Commission within the legislative format, and the PACE within the observation missions, are constantly engaged in electoral processes.

She touched upon use of administrative resources in electoral processes and stated that despite various countries use administrative resources in various ways, the consequence is all the same – non-democratic elections, inexpedient fund consumption and non-competitive environment.

The Head of the Council of Europe Office in Tbilisi, Christian Urse dwelt on cooperation with the CoE and Georgian Government, with political parties and the experts.

According to him, one of the missions of the Office is to improve the legislation, support in addressing the challenges and transparency of the electoral processes.

After the welcome speeches, the floor was given to the Vice Speaker, Giorgi Kakhiani to discuss the international texts and practice. “The elections, as the topic are very relevant for any democracy in general and every state strives to ensure fair, democratic and equal elections. It is the institutional mechanism enacting democracy. The elections create the opportunity for realization of sovereignty and the quality of the elections serves as an index of quality of democracy. Thus, the democratic states try to ensure fair, equal and democratic elections. One of the problems the authorities encounter during the elections is the topic of our Conference – misuse of administrative resources. The authorities, as a rule, encounter such temptation, though they shall try to prevent misuse of administrative resources by any means – through the respective changes to the legislation or otherwise. So, the topic is very interesting. PACE holds the immense experience in observing the elections and today, we will hear lots of interesting recommendations”, - G. Kakhiani noted.

The attendees – the representatives of PACE and Venice Commission, Armenian MPs, ECHR and Ukrainian Electoral Administration held the thematic discussions and introduced the reports.

The Conference is being held in Tbilisi Courtyard Marriot on December 2-3.