On 19 July, 2016, the Public Defender of Georgia addressed the Parliament of Georgia with a legislative proposal to amend the Administrative Offenses Code of Georgia in order to eliminate a legislative gap found during the study of citizen D.Sh.’s application.

The legislative proposal concerns the first part of article 116 of the Administrative Offenses Code, according to which, “driving under the influence of alcohol or evasion of alcohol testing, envisaged by legislation, represents an administrative offense”. Pursuant to paragraph 10 of the same article’s note, "if use of alcohol is revealed by testing, the driver has the right to apply to appropriate medical-forensic facility within 2 hours and pass a clinical-laboratory and/or ethanol test there. If clinical-laboratory examination cannot prove that the driver is drunk, he/she is exempted from administrative penalty. Such a possibility is not provided for persons who were subjected to administrative penalty due to evading alcohol testing. The Public Defender considers that similar approach must be applied to the individuals who evaded alcohol testing, but later passed a test in a relevant medical/forensic facility.

Accordingly, the Public Defender requests in the legislative proposal that amendments be made to the Administrative Offences Code so that the possibility provided by paragraph 10 of the note of article 116 is applied to the cases of evasion of alcohol testing by drivers.