Around 700 civil servants fired during Georgia’s political crisis, TI Georgia says

According to a new report by the local anti-corruption organisation Transparency International (TI) Georgia, around 700 civil servants have been dismissed from a variety of agencies on ‘political grounds’ since December 2024.

The report, published on Monday, highlighted that the largest number of employees were dismissed from Georgia’s Defence Ministry, Tbilisi City Hall, the Justice House, and the Central Election Commission, among others. In addition, two entire institutions — the Parliamentary Research Centre and the Civil Service Bureau — were shut down.

According to TI Georgia, the employees who were dismissed or removed from their positions had signed protest statements against the suspension of European integration or openly expressed their critical position towards government policies’.

In March 2025, Tbilisi Mayor and Secretary General of the ruling Georgian Dream party Kakha Kaladze denied reports that employees were being dismissed from the capital’s municipal services on political grounds. However, he also emphasised that it was ‘completely incomprehensible’ for someone to work at City Hall while simultaneously criticising its policies.

Previously, in December 2024, Kaladze called the signing of petitions by municipality employees ‘sabotage’, claiming it was part of a ‘coup plan’. He noted that such an attempt would ‘not go unanswered, of course, within the framework of the constitution and the law’.

Tbilisi Mayor Kaladze claims no city hall employees have been dismissed on political grounds

Kakha Kaladze also emphasised that it was ‘completely incomprehensible’ for someone to work at city hall while simultaneously criticising its policies.

OC MediaMikheil Gvadzabia

In their report, TI Georgia additionally claimed that one of the main attempts by the ruling Georgian Dream party to suppress the ongoing protests ‘is to fully bring public service under the party’s control’.

As evidence of this, TI Georgia noted that Georgian Dream had initiated repressive amendments to the Law on Public Service four times in the last three months, ‘significantly worsen[ing] the legal protection of public servants’ and ‘effectively abolish[ing] the public service reform that has been implemented for years with the support of international organisations and was necessary prerequisite for the country’s integration into European structures’.

Among the changes was deleting the requirement that heads of departments and their deputies must participate in an open competition. In addition, under the new law, civil servants will be evaluated twice yearly, which, given that two negative assessments equate to a dismissal, civil servants can be fired in one year rather than two.

The most recent legislative change occurred on 1 April, when Georgian Dream MPs adopted an amendment to the Law on Combating Corruption, which would restrict civil servants from engaging in ‘scientific, pedagogical, and artistic activities’ unless they have the ‘written consent of the head of the relevant institution or an authorised person/body specified by law’. The only exceptions listed were the Georgian President, MPs, and the Georgian government.

The report additionally noted that in parallel to the dismissals of civil servants and the legislative amendments, the Justice House has continued to ‘create artificial barriers’ for registering an independent trade union for civil servants.

Despite not being officially registered, the union, along with the local Social Justice Centre, have appealed to the UN International Labour Organisation to establish an investigative commission regarding the mass dismissal of civil servants, while the Georgian Trade Unions Confederation (GTUC) has similarly appealed over the violation of labour rights.

Since Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s announcement that the government would be halting the country’s EU accession bid in November 2024, Georgians across the country have held daily protests. Human rights activists in Georgia have suggested that more than 400 demonstrators may have been detained during November and December alone — a large number of whom claim that they were subjected to physical or psychological abuse by law enforcement officers.

Fired for speaking out — the ‘cleansing’ of Georgia’s civil service

Dozens of civil servants have been dismissed after speaking out against the halting of Georgia’s EU membership process.

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