The Daily Beat: 10 October
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, accompanied by his spouse, Lévai Anikó, and a government delegation, arrived in Georgia with a two-day official visit. At the Tbilisi airport, the Hungarian guest was met by the foreign minister, Ilia Darchiashvili. According to media reports, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili are set to discuss bilateral trade-economic relations, the Black Sea submarine electric cable project, and Georgia’s European integration. Reportedly, prime ministers will also chair a Georgian-Hungarian intergovernmental economic commission meeting, and several bilateral agreements will be signed as part of the visit.
Council of Europe Venice Commission published its follow-up opinion on the Organic Law on Common Courts, welcoming some of the amendments to the Organic Law adopted in June 2023 and some of the September 2023 draft amendments, but noted that “important previous recommendations have not yet been addressed.” The Commission invited the authorities to “pursue the reform strategy without unjustified delay.” Implementing transparent and effective judicial reform in line with the recommendations of the Venice Commission is one of the 12 EU recommendations necessary for obtaining the EU candidacy status.
A local watchdog, Coalition for Independent and Transparent Judiciary, released a statement addressing the Georgian judiciary challenges and the ways to tackle them. In its statement, a watchdog uniting around 40 NGOs stressed: “Despite several waves of reforms carried out over the years, the Georgian judicial system still faces fundamental challenges and is experiencing a significant crisis of legitimacy and trust.”
The first deputy speaker of the parliament from the ruling Georgian Dream party, Gia Volski, slammed and rejected even considering the draft parliamentary resolution tabled by some opposition lawmakers on a possible deployment of the Russian naval base in occupied Abkhazia. Gia Volski believes that the tabling of such solutions is inadequate and provocative since Russia announced its plans to build a naval base in Ochamchire in 2009.
In an interview with the Russian state TV channel, Occupied Abkhazia’s de facto foreign minister, Inal Ardzinba, claimed that drawing parallels between Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh is inappropriate. He further argued that Nagorno-Karabakh was not internationally recognized, not even by Armenia itself, while Abkhazia’s state sovereignty is recognized by the biggest country in the world – Russia.
The Tbilisi City Court sentenced Beka Grigoriadis, the father of Lazare Grigoriadis, a young man arrested on charges of violence against police during the March 7-8 protests, to five days in detention. Grigoriadis was handcuffed in the courtroom. The judge also recognized the brother of Beka Grigoriadis, Kakha Grigoriadis, as an administrative offender and fined 2500 GEL. Beka and Kakha Grigoriadis were detained on October 5 during the rally against adopting amendments to the law on Assemblies and Manifestations.
