By order of the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, changes are being introduced to the parliamentary accreditation system. According to Papuashvili, the amendments concern both individual journalists and media outlets as a whole.

Under the changes, in the case of repeated violations of parliamentary accreditation rules, individual journalists will have their accreditation suspended for up to one year. In addition, depending on the severity and frequency of the violation, it will be possible to revoke accreditation for an entire media outlet for up to one year.

“As you know, at one point, when certain decisions were made in the European Parliament, I also said that we would study the accreditation system in the European Parliament, and there were certain issues that were interesting to adopt in the Georgian Parliament in order to align Georgia’s parliamentary accreditation system with the European system. So today, certain changes will be introduced to my order regarding the accreditation system.

You know that currently in the Georgian Parliament, violations of accreditation rules result in a one-month suspension for the first violation, and a six-month suspension in case of repetition. We have seen that in the European Parliament there are also one-year suspensions, so we will align the Georgian Parliament’s accreditation system with the European Parliament’s system: the first violation will result in a one-month suspension, and the second may lead to suspension of up to one year.

Second, as you know, in the Georgian Parliament, sanctions for violating accreditation rules were applied only to journalists — one month or six months. We have seen that in the European Parliament, sanctions can also be applied to media organizations, not only journalists. Therefore, we will align the Georgian accreditation system with the European one, and based on the severity and frequency of violations, it will be possible to revoke accreditation for an entire media outlet for up to one year.

Essentially, these are the two main changes we identified from the European Parliament’s experience. Of course, we want to adopt this experience, and the parliamentary accreditation system will become more aligned, although still more refined than the European Parliament’s system.

The third issue we observed during a recent incident in the European Parliament was a requirement that a journalist had not obtained prior consent for an interview. We do not currently have a requirement for prior consent, and we will not adopt this from the European Parliament — meaning there will be no obligation to obtain advance approval from a member of parliament in order to conduct an interview. Therefore, we will not, at least for now, adopt this stricter European Parliament approach into the Georgian Parliament’s accreditation system,” Papuashvili said.