We are very disappointed that this continues to go forward. Such a statement made today the US Ambassador to Georgia.

“Georgia’s leaders have agreed that there is a need to continue the judicial reform that Georgia has been doing for the last fifteen years. They negotiated and agreed on a roadmap for judicial reform in the April 19th Agreement - that remains a very useful roadmap - every element in that is based on the recommendations of international and domestic legal experts, many of those, the Venice Commission recommendations, were requested by parliament, so these are in fact international recommendations in line with international legal standards that parliament itself requested.

So, it is puzzling why these appointments continue to go forward when Georgia’s leaders have acknowledged that there is more work to be done to ensure a transparent, accountable, merit-based judicial system. That’s what the people of Georgia deserve.

And we have, I think, been very clear in our statements in saying: please do the work that’s necessary to know how best to improve Georgia’s judicial system, how best to ensure that there is transparency, accountability, and merit-based, impartial decisions by Georgia’s judicial system”, - said Kelly Degnan.