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In a fast-tracked process, the Georgian Dream-led parliament has introduced further amendments to various laws, including the Soviet-era Code of Administrative Offenses—the regime’s primary tool of repression.

The stated purpose of these amendments is to create the state’s capacity to respond effectively to public security challenges. But this raises an immediate question: What challenges is the regime referring to, and why does it believe the existing mechanisms are insufficient? The answer is obvious. The real objective is to quash the ongoing protests against the regime and ultimately silence critical voices—voices that have remained resistant vis-à-vis the increasingly severe crackdowns.

Moreover, in pursuing these measures, the regime itself appears to be facing the threat of resource exhaustion. As a result, it has taken various steps aimed at both intensifying fear among citizens and making it easier to impose the harshest possible punishments. Whether these efforts will succeed, however, remains to be seen. Achieving this goal may require the regime to introduce additional mechanisms and further tighten its repressive apparatus—at the cost of yet more resources. Only time will tell whose interests and assets will be sacrificed in the process. At this stage, however, a general assessment of the means employed to achieve these objectives is already more or less possible.

Interestingly, in what it considers one of its most challenging undertakings, the regime has partially acknowledged—believing this admission to be in its own interest—something it had long tried to ignore: the existence of criminal provisions within the Code of Administrative Offenses and the failure to apply the appropriate legal standards to them.

The explanatory note states: "In practice, the effective enforcement of legal norms often depends on the existence of appropriate measures of accountability. In this regard, the Code of Administrative Offenses includes offences that, by their nature, go beyond minor infractions and therefore require a stricter approach."

The justification for the draft law also references the case Makarashvili v. Georgia. In its ruling, the European Court emphasized that although Georgian legislation classified the offense in question as administrative, its well-established case law dictated otherwise. Given the nature of the penalty imposed—administrative imprisonment, which entails deprivation of liberty and serves a purely punitive function—the Court considered the offense to be criminal under the Convention. Accordingly, it applied the legal standards typically used in criminal cases.

Accordingly, this serves as a clear acknowledgment that the Soviet-era Code of Administrative Offenses, still in force today, does indeed contain provisions for offenses of a criminal nature—ones that have been applied with notable flexibility and effectiveness in practice. Beyond mere recognition, this also signals an intent to expand such offenses and impose even harsher measures, such as extending administrative detention to 60 days and introducing stricter sanctions.

At the same time, the initiators of these amendments see no issue with this approach. They even cite the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, which holds that administrative detention does not inherently violate the rights protected by the European Convention—provided that the legal status of the detainee and procedural safeguards are upheld.

While the explanatory note says little about the current state of procedural guarantees,  the criminal nature of these tightened measures calls for raising the standard of case review and aligning the evidentiary requirements and burden of proof more closely with those of criminal proceedings.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the deeply repressive nature of these mechanisms, analyze the case review processes applied to them, and uncover the real motivations behind these legislative changes.

See the attached file for the entire document.