Georgia ranks among Europe’s top 20 for judicial independence

The European Anti-Corruption Research Centre - European Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building Studies - has released an extensive new report analysing the causes and trends of corruption risks across Europe. Commissioned by the European Union as part of the European Commission’s Research and Innovation Programme, the study covers all 41 EU member and candidate countries.

Among its many thematic sections, the report includes an in-depth assessment of judicial independence across Europe. Georgia performs strongly in this ranking: according to a visualised Europe-wide map included in the report, Georgia scores 6.5 out of 10 for judicial independence. With this result, it stands alongside Lithuania and Portugal and ranks 16th in Europe - placing the country within the continent’s top twenty.

Georgia outperforms every EU candidate country in terms of judicial independence, as well as several EU and NATO member states. These include Italy, Spain, Latvia, Greece, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Albania, Romania, Poland, Türkiye, North Macedonia, Croatia, and others.

At the lower end of the European scale, two countries scored below 3 points: Moldova (2.6) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (2.2).

The report’s evidence-based assessment of judicial system quality also draws on judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), specifically cases concerning violations of the right to a fair trial.

According to ECHR rulings, Albania registered 38 violations of fair-trial rights out of 78 total decisions. Moldova recorded 180 such violations out of 492 cases, Türkiye 991 out of 3,458, and Ukraine 622 out of 1,800.

Among EU member states, Austria registered 97 violations out of 287 cases, Croatia 142 out of 406, Romania 481 out of 1,541, Greece 145 out of 969, and Italy 301 out of 1,915. In Romania, one-third of all violations concern the right to a fair trial - representing the highest per-capita share in Europe.

The comprehensive study on corruption risks across Europe was prepared with the involvement of the Institute for European Analysis and Policy within the framework of the EU-funded project Bridging the Evidence, Regulation, and Impact Gap in Anti-Corruption Policy.