On May 16, 2018, Deputy Public Defender Giorgi Burjanadze and representatives of the Public Defender's Officemet with Stavros Lambrinidis, the Special Representative of the European Union for Human Rights. At the meeting, the EU Special Representative spoke about the challenges and best practices from the EU perspective in the field of human rights. He emphasized the importance of sharing new positive experience in the field of human rights across the world and expressed a desire to get more detailed information about the activities of the Public Defender of Georgia, as an institution with one of the best practices in the protection of human rights.

Representatives of the Public Defender provided information about the structure, main directions and trends of the Public Defender's Office, as well as the Public Defender's recommendations, the system of general proposals and amicus curiae briefs, their addressees and quality of implementation. They also talked about the principle of hotline, the National Preventive Mechanism and results of the monitoring carried out by the Public Defender's Office.

Special emphasis were put on the cases of ill-treatment committed by law enforcers and drawbacks in the investigation of such cases, the situation in penitentiary institutions, violence against children and domestic violence, which requires more efforts from the Government. Social problems, funding for the mental health system and low qualification of the staff were also briefly discussed at the meeting. Other topics of discussion were the most frequent forms of discrimination, the necessity for raising the level of civic education and the projects implemented by the Human Rights Academy of the Public Defender in this direction.

The EU Special Representative noted that the EU describes the efforts of the Public Defender’s Office of Georgia as important and that its performance is and must be exemplary for human rights organizations functioning inside and outside the region.