On June 22, 2020, the Committee on Legal Affairs of the Parliament of Georgia discussed draft law on amendments to the Law of Georgia on Information Security at the third hearing. Based on the proposal of the initiator of the bill, MP Irakli Sesiashvili, the Committee supported the issue of returning the draft law from the third hearing to the second hearing at a plenary sitting.

The issues on the basis of which the initiator has proposed returning the bill to the regime of the second hearing remain unknown before discussion at the plenary sitting. Hereby, the document reflecting new changes to the draft amendments is also not available yet. According to the initiator of the bill, since the representatives of the private sector together with the public institutions fall under the scope of the draft law are considered the subjects of Critical Information Infrastructure,several issuesstill remain on the discussion agenda. This fact proves that the opinions of the interested parties were not properly taken into account in the process of initiating the bill.

Once initiated, the draft law has been criticized by the representatives of CSOs and private organizations. The process of elaborating draft amendments lacked inclusion of various stakeholders, including NGOs, experts, field specialists and private sector. It is also unclear whether an in-depth analysis of international practice and standards were conducted in the drafting process.

Since the first reading of the bill, opinions and recommendations represented by CSOs and private companies only partially reflected in the proposed amendments. Despite some positive modifications, principally problematic aspects of the draft law still represented a challenge as remained unchanged during the second hearing. Second reading of the draft law passed through without any discussion or debates at the committee hearing.

Returning the draft law from the third hearing to the second hearing regime once again reaffirms that the process of the legal drafting has been accelerated, lacked openness and the relevant involvement of CSOs, private sector representatives as well as experts in the field.

Based on the above, we once again call on the Parliament of Georgia to:

- Ensure active participation of all relevant stakeholders, including the representatives of local and international organizations as well as the private sector in the process of preparing draft amendments to the Law of Georgia on Information Security.