Georgian Dream’s latest wave of amendments to the administrative code have targeted the rules for appealing protest-related fines, including introducing a method to detain demonstrators who have not paid their fines. However, experts have expressed skepticism about how realistic the implementation of these changes will be.
According to the legislation passed in its final hearing on Wednesday, if a person does not pay the fine for a specific violation, they will be administratively detained in case of a repeat offence.
The amendments covered a wide range of articles, including road blocking, for which fines of ₾5,000 ($1,800) have been frequently imposed on participants in the daily anti-government protests in central Tbilisi, as well as on journalists covering them.
According to one amendment, citizens will no longer be able to appeal fines related to road blocking — along with other violations — at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and will have to challenge them directly in court.
Under the current legislation, someone could first appeal road-blocking fines to the police, and only proceed to court if the police rejected their complaint. The demonstrators often used this bureaucratic step to buy several months of time, in order to not face financial pressure all at once. The law adopted on Wednesday theoretically reduces this bureaucracy by removing the Interior Ministry from the process. But some observers doubt this move will effectively work in practice.
‘The system is overwhelmed’
Nika Simonishvili, a lawyer and former chair of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), is among those providing legal assistance to protesters fined during protests.
Simonishvili told OC Media that the absolute majority of these fines are being appealed by demonstrators.
‘Normally, it takes quite a long time [for the police] to review these appeals. As a result, a large number of cases have piled up in the patrol police and legal departments [of the Interior Ministry]’, he noted.
The state campaign to fine people for blocking roads began in January, alongside the growing number of surveillance cameras at the protest site and a tenfold increase in the fine for blocking roads — from ₾500 ($180) to ₾5,000 ($1,800).
Mariam Bogveradze
Under the law in force at the time, fines issued by police officers were sent by the ministry to the court, which then made the final approval (or rejection). However, since February, fines have become subject to the ministry’s own discretion, allowing the police to issue as many fines as they wanted without court approval.
According to Simonishvili, the ministry seemingly simplified its job by removing the court component from the first stage. However, it added a new burden: whereas previously, a fine confirmed by the court could be appealed directly in court, after the February changes, protesters gained an option to challenge fines first at the ministry, and only go to court if that failed.
‘At least formally, as part of the case review process, [ministry employees] have to request materials, review video recordings, hand over case files to the parties, and give them an opportunity to state their position […] In many cases these rights are not fully realised, but still, it takes quite a long time to review these appeals’, he said.
Simonishvili stated that at first the Interior Ministry managed to review the appeals relatively quickly, ‘within two to three months’. However, as the number of appeals increased, the process became more complicated, and as a result, a large share of fines submitted to the ministry have yet to be responded to.
‘The ministry’s system has been overwhelmed by reviewing these appeals. The bureaucracy added after the February changes turned out to be quite burdensome for them’, Simonishvili said, noting that with Wednesday’s amendments, ‘the ministry simply got rid of these procedures altogether and handed them over entirely to the courts’.
Simonishvili added that the state might buy some time with the latest amendments, but it is unclear how much. The lawyer emphasised that not only the fines issued after the latest amendments take effect will be sent to the court, but also all those fines that are currently stuck in the ministry and have not yet been reviewed.
According to the lawyer, the courts are overloaded too, with only ‘six or seven judges’ handling administrative cases related to the protests.
As an example of the courts’ backlog, Simonishvili cited his own fine, which he said was issued in February and reached the court in April, but has been stuck there ever since without being reviewed.
‘I can name some other administrative cases that the court has not reviewed for a year […] I don’t know how they plan to manage [the fines]. If these cases are given priority, they might be reviewed more quickly’, he said.
Are more detentions likely?
During the daily demonstrations which erupted after the government’s EU U-turn in November 2024, the police have issued the highest number of protest-related administrative fines specifically for road blocking. In many cases, the fines are issued repeatedly — activist Giorgi Mumladze has already received 42 fines, while politician Paata Burchuladze has received 34.
Against this backdrop, the second part of the recently adopted legislative amendments, which concerns detention for repeat offences if fines go unpaid, has raised questions about whether mass arrests of protesters for road blocking might begin.
Simonishvili said that he suspects that this amendment is mostly intended as a tool of intimidation. He emphasised that even before the latest changes, blocking roads, aside from fines, was already punishable by up to 15 days of administrative detention. However, the police have not used this measure.
One reason for this, the lawyer said, is the limited capacity of pretrial detention facilities: ‘there are resources for about 130 people [at the same time]’.
‘Even if you use 60-day detentions, how many people can you actually apply those 60 days to?’ he added, noting that huge fines are an even heavier burden on demonstrators than short-term imprisonments.
The lawyer also pointed out that for the police to apply the new detention measure added by the latest amendments, the fine must have gone through all stages of appeal and been confirmed by the court.
In parallel with anti-government and pro-European protests, Georgian Dream has already adopted several legislative changes, targeting protests, independent media and civil society.
According to GYLA, between November 2024 and 18 March 2025 alone, ₾2 million ($730,000) in fines were issued for ‘blocking roads’ — a number that continues to grow.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
