The Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights - special committee of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) - decided at its meeting on September 29 to recommend Lado Chanturia to the vacant position of the Georgia-nominated judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

“The Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights assessed the list of the candidates to the Court in respect of Georgia,” the committee report said, referring to the candidacies of Lado Chanturia, Lali Papiashvili and Otar Sichinava. “The Committee recommends to the Assembly, by a large majority, Mr. Lado Chanturia as the most qualified candidate, over Ms. Lali Papiashvili,” the report added.

The list of candidates will now be submitted to PACE, the assembly made up of 324 parliamentarians, which will proceed to voting on the candidates in a secret ballot, held during its plenary session. An absolute majority of votes cast is required in the first round. If this is not achieved, a second round is held and the candidate with the most votes is duly elected to serve on the Court for a non-renewable term of nine years.

Lali Papiashvilli, deputy Chair of the Constitutional Court, and Otar Sichinava, judge at the Tbilisi Court of Appeal, were selected as a result of the repeat competition announced on July 25 by the Ministry of Justice to replace the two rejected candidates in the previous candidate composition. Lado Chanturia, Georgia’s ambassador to Germany since 2014 and former Supreme Court Chair, was approved by the Government in its previous list of candidates.

The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights rules on individual or state applications alleging violations of the civil and political rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. The tenure of Nona Tsotsoria, current Georgia-nominated ECHR judge, expired in January 2017, but was prolonged due to the PACE committee rejection of Georgia-nominated candidates.