Mogesalmabit, gamarjoba,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my pleasure to welcome you to this EU-funded event to discuss fundamental topics for any democratic society: national security and societal resilience.

Security Sector Reform is a long-term political process. It goes to the heart of power relations in any country. In order to succeed, security sector reform needs to be nationally driven and based on political commitment and leadership, inter-institutional cooperation and broad stakeholder participation.

Democratic oversight is equally important for a strong and resilient national security system. Accountability, transparency and openness must be applied and legal guarantees put in place to prevent arbitrary decision-making and possible abuse of the security structures.

This is why a strong oversight mechanism of the Georgia’s security system has been included also as one of the nine steps attached to Georgia’s EU candidate status. Addressing and improving the parliamentary oversight of security services would be necessary for Georgia to continue on its EU accession path. [step 5 - Further improve the implementation of parliamentary oversight notably of the security services…]

Despite some reforms undertaken in this regard in the past, the reports that will be presented today unfortunately reveal serious concerns. Research findings show that the parliamentary and judicial oversight of security services in Georgia are still too weak and inefficient.

The hosts of today’s gathering are three civil society organisations – the Social Justice Center, CRRC Georgia and Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. These organisations have been implementing this EU-funded security sector oversight project for the last three years.

Three years marked by increasingly hostile environment for civil society oversight. Today, in this crucial moment for the future of Georgia, civil society organisations have become direct targets of disinformation and propaganda campaigns and their space has been curtailed by a combination of legal and non-legal measures. In this environment, meaningful oversight has become even harder.

This is incompatible with Georgia’s aspiration to join the European Union. As HRVP Borrell said last week, these are signals of a shift towards authoritarianism, which takes Georgia away from the EU path.

As the EU ambassador, my sincere hope is that the future developments will result in re-establishing of the favourable environment for meaningful reforms, including the security sector reform and building of the National Security System aligned with the European standards.

The standards are respect of human rights, access to credible information and free and independent media, and undisturbed functioning of effective democratic control and oversight.

Wishing you a fruitful discussion!

Didi Madloba

EUDEL