Lawyers educated in Germany undermine democracy in Georgia - German newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Georgian PM
On June 13, one of Germany’s most popular newspapers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published an article titled “German Doctors from Tbilisi: How Lawyers Educated in Germany Are Undermining Democracy in Georgia.”
The article, written by journalist Reinhard Veser, discusses the prime minister and the speaker of the Georgian Parliament.
What is written in the article
“When prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze visited Berlin in April, he spoke fluently in German with Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a joint press conference about an important aspect of the relationship between Georgia and Germany — the systematic training of Georgian lawyers in Germany since the 1990s.
‘I, the speaker of Parliament, the minister of Justice, the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs, and many other politicians from the Georgian government studied and graduated from universities in Germany,’ Kobakhidze said. ‘In Germany, we learned that democracy, the rule of law, fundamental rights, and state sovereignty are the highest basic principles and must be protected with particular attention.’
These words were not only a diplomatic gesture but also part of a confrontation between Kobakhidze and the German Chancellor, who had explicitly criticized the ‘Foreign Influence’ law presented by the ruling party ‘Georgian Dream’ in parliament a few months earlier.
Kobakhidze and the politicians with German doctoral degrees, whom he mentioned, played a crucial role in passing the law, which will come into force in August.
And they, like Kobakhidze in Berlin, have repeatedly mentioned their German education in various circumstances as an argument for the compliance of this law with European standards: the message being that it couldn’t be otherwise from those with such a background.
The doctoral supervisor of the minister of Justice of Georgia, Rati Bregadze, Hamburg expert on Eastern law Otto Luchterhandt, previously tried to organize a joint statement from professors but received only refusals.
In the end, he wrote an open letter to his former student. Düsseldorf constitutional law expert Martin Morlok, with whom prime minister Kobakhidze worked on a dissertation titled ‘The Functioning of Political Parties and Their Freedom,’ told FAZ that he does not feel responsible for his former students, as ‘that would be paternalism.’
One of the professors justified his refusal to Luchterhandt by saying that he lacked ‘scientific knowledge’ on this issue. However, it has never been impossible to obtain detailed information about the content of the Georgian law and its consequences.”
