European Court to interview Georgian judicial candidates soon
By Messenger staff
Thursday, September 28
Interviews with three judicial candidates of Georgia will be held in the Strasbourg-based European Court on September 29.
First Deputy Minister of Justice of Georgia Aleksandre Baramidze is sure that the list of candidates sent from Georgia to the court will be accepted and one of the candidates will become a judge of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
He did not name which candidate he believes has the most chance of success.
The judicial candidates of Georgia are as follows: Lali Papiashvili, deputy chairperson of the Constitutional Court of Georgia; Otar Sichinava, former judge of the Constitutional Court of Georgia and incumbent judge of the Court of Appeal; and Ambassador of Georgia to Germany, Lado Chanturia.
Papiashvili and Sichinava were selected in Georgia for the ECtHR after the court, for various reasons, twice rejected Georgian candidates, and a special governmental commission had to announce the contest for the third time.
Georgia must send three candidates to the European Court, out of whom the court selects only one for a period of nine years.
The government explained in a special decree that in the last selection process that they also took the recommendation of the Council of Europe experts into account.
In the recommendation letter, the Council experts named the working experience in either the Supreme or the Constitutional Court as an advantage for the nominees to the ECtHR, the government wrote in the decree.
A group of leading NGOs, acting with the name of the Coalition for Independent and Transparent Judiciary, which should have been involved in the selecting process of the judges within the governmental commission, boycotted the process. In a special statement they stressed that the commission was partial to some candidates.