The credentials of the Georgian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) have been challenged on substantive grounds on the opening day of the 2025 winter plenary session.

Axar.az reports citing Georgian media.

According to PACE’s Rules of Procedure, the substantive grounds are “serious violation of the basic principles of the Council of Europe” or “persistent failure to honor obligations and commitments and lack of cooperation in the assembly’s monitoring procedure.”

“Georgian parliament is a one-party parliament with only Georgian Dream in it. Ivanishvili regime is demolishing democratic order in Georgia,” said Boriana Åberg (EPP, Sweden), who presented the challenge.

She was supported by at least thirty members of the Assembly, belonging to at least five national delegations as required by the Rules.

The challenge was immediately referred without debate to the Assembly’s Monitoring Committee for report, and to the Rules Committee for opinion, and will be debated by the Assembly on the afternoon of Wednesday 29 January.

Under the rules, the Assembly must vote for one of three options: to ratify the credentials, not to ratify them, or to ratify them “together with depriving or suspending the exercise of some of the rights of participation or representation of members of the delegation concerned in the activities of the Assembly and its bodies.”

The Georgian delegation to PACE consists of GD MPs Tea Tsulukiani, Mariam Lashkhi, and Givi Mikanadze, as well as MP Eka Sepashvili of the GD’s offshoot party People’s Power.

As their credentials were challenged, the members of the delegation may now sit provisionally with the same rights as other Assembly members until the Assembly reaches a decision, but may not vote in any proceedings related to the consideration of their credentials.