The abstract of the judgment (The judgment is available only in Georgian). Abstracts published by the Constitutional Court of Georgia summarise the facts of the case and key legal considerations of the judgment.

Abstract

The Constitutional Court of Georgia upheld the constitutional complaint №757 of the citizen of Georgia Giorgi Kraveishvili v. the Government of Georgia and declared unconstitutional the confidentiality of identity of independent experts, who evaluate the projects submitted in the competition for state scientific grants for fundamental studies with regard to freedom of information enshrined in Article 41(1) of the Constitution.

The Constitutional Court interpreted that the information about the identity of experts is related to the issue of their participation in the process of execution of public powers. More specifically, expert participates in the decision-making of the scientific foundation and their assessments foster the foundation to solve the problem of issuing of grants. Thus the identity of an independent expert constitutes public information available in the state institution, whereas non-disclosure of identity of experts presents restriction of access to information available in public records.

The Constitutional Court pointed out in the Judgement, that the disputed regulation was set forth not in law, but in a subordinate normative legal act – Resolution №84 of the Government and the Parliament did not delegate the power to the Government according to the procedure prescribed by the law to regulate this issue. Thus, as the disputed rule did not meet the formal criterion on necessity of restriction of a right by law, it was declared unconstitutional with regard to Article 41(1) of the Constitution, which protects the right to access to information available in official records of the state.