According to lawyer Nika Simonishvili, recent amendments to the Law on Public Service remove the requirement for department heads and their deputies to know the state language or hold Georgian citizenship.

Simonishvili stated that the changes prepared by Georgian Dream are even more harmful than they initially appeared, as they disregard the principles of state language proficiency and Georgian citizenship for mid-level management roles.

“The issue is that these individuals will be employed under administrative contracts, and they will not be subject to Article 27, Paragraph 1 of the Law on Public Service, which establishes the following requirements: Georgian citizenship, legal capacity, proficiency in the state language, adulthood, and a civil servant certificate.

This amendment means that it will depend entirely on specific officials whether they hire Georgian citizens or individuals who know the state language.

I cannot say for sure whether this was done intentionally or was a mistake (you can’t swear on anything with the ‘Georgian Dream’), but the fact is that we could end up with foreign citizens in mid-level public service positions who do not know the state language,” Simonishvili wrote on his Facebook page.

The amendments to the Law on Public Service were reviewed in an expedited manner and passed in all three readings by Georgian Dream last week.