Ten Georgian civil society organisations (CSOs) have asked Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili to oppose modifications to the Criminal Procedure Code adopted by Parliament on June 7 that establish new rules for defining timeframes for covert investigative actions and notifying an individual of a covert investigative action. The adopted bill falls far short of international human rights norms and the practise of the European Court of Human Rights, civil society organisations said. The undersigned civil society organisations encouraged President Zourabichvili to bring vetoed amendments back to the Parliament with reasoned objections, stressing that a further decline in human rights protection standards would be a severe setback for Georgia's democratic development.

According to the statement, a person under surveillance "will never be able to claim the right of appeal, exercise the right to a fair trial, or defend his or her right to privacy." The statement has been signed by Transparency International Georgia (TI-Georgia), the Georgian Young Lawyers' Association, the Social Justice Center, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), the Georgian Democracy Initiative, the Human Rights Center, the Liberal Academy, the Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), Rights Georgia, and the Open Society Georgia Foundation. 

The signatories also drew attention to an ongoing case in the Constitutional Court in which CSOs and citizens filed a joint appeal against legislation regulating covert investigative actions. According to the signatories, the court "has been dragging its feet for four years to make a final decision."