On October 16, the Constitutional Court of Georgia rendered a conclusion that allowed the ruling party to continue the artificial process of impeachment of the President.

In our opinion, in the conclusion made by the Constitutional Court, a number of important legal issues have been left out of consideration, the answers to which would be necessary to make a reasoned assessment - whether the disputed actions of the President constituted a violation of the Constitution or not.

Nevertheless, even if we assume that the president violated the constitution, the reasoning developed by the Constitutional Court after the "establishment of the violation of the Constitution" does not withstand criticism. In particular, the Constitutional Court completely ignored its role in determining the  level of violation of the Constitution necessary for the impeachment. In particular, while evaluating the impeachment action of the President, the court undermined its function and avoided the responsibility to evaluate the legality of the President's actions for the purposes of the impeachment.

In other words, the Constitutional Court left without a legal assessment and subjected it to a completely political assessment as to whether the significance and/or effects of the violation of the Constitution were sufficient. From this point of view, it fully shared the ruling party's opinion that the legal structure of impeachment is created by any violation of the constitution, and its seriousness is assessed only by the number of votes in the parliament.

In doing so, the court established a threatening precedent that not only undermines the importance of the institution of impeachment, but also increases the risks of interfering with the stable functioning of state bodies, and also substantially undermines the guarantees of independence of non-political institutions to which impeachment can be applied. In sum, the Constitutional Court did not differentiate between the meaning of the violation of the Constitution for the purposes of different constitutional institutions. At the same time, the same court establishes violations of the constitution in dozens of cases every year, and technically all these violations can be turned into a basis for impeachment by the parliament.

In our opinion, the conclusion of the Constitutional Court of Georgia is unsubstantiated and significantly diminishes the role of the Constitutional Court in terms of legal control of the impeachment.