What Article 264 governs
Article 264 of the Code of Administrative Offences of Georgia defines the circle of circumstances that an authority (official) is obliged to establish when examining a case of an administrative offence. The norm contains no sanction — it is a procedural rule obliging the examining authority not to close a case on the basis of partial conclusions, but to investigate every mandatory question in full.
In practical terms this article is an important instrument of defence: where a decision does not establish one of these circumstances, that becomes a ground for appealing the decision. It is therefore in the interest of every fined person to know what ought to have been established in his or her case.
Which circumstances must be clarified
Under the article, the authority must establish: whether an administrative offence was committed; whether the person is guilty of its commission; whether the person is subject to administrative liability; whether there are mitigating and aggravating circumstances of liability; whether property damage was caused. It must also be clarified whether there are grounds for transferring the materials of the offence to a public organisation or a work collective, as well as other circumstances relevant to the correct resolution of the case.
Each item of this list is a separate question. For instance, „guilt“ and „whether the offence was committed“ are different questions: an offence may factually have been committed while the particular person was not guilty of it. Precisely these distinctions often change the outcome of a case, which is why establishing them is imposed by law.
Why this article matters for the defence
A decision adopted at the examination of a case is correct only where all the circumstances to be clarified are established and reasoned. If the decision contains no answer to whether the person was guilty of the offence, or to which circumstances were mitigating, the mandatory rule has been breached — and such a decision must lead to its revision.
In practice it is common to read from the record that a case was examined superficially: the conclusion on guilt is stated in a general wording, while the circumstances are not assessed at all. In that situation Article 264 provides the anchor by which that defect is fixed in an appeal.
How we can help
The lawyers of legal.ge will verify the decision in your case through the prism of Article 264: whether all the necessary circumstances were established, whether guilt was reasoned, whether mitigating circumstances and damage were assessed. The defects found will become grounds for an appeal. For a consultation, bring all the documents of the case — the record, the decision, your explanations and the correspondence.
What this means in practice
Picture a typical episode: the authority recorded a breach against you, but the decision states only that „the person committed the offence“ — with no question of the form of guilt, the motives of the act, or the person's attitude. Article 264 fixes exactly this defect: establishing guilt is a separate mandatory question, and without it the decision is incomplete. Or another example: the person asked that a mitigating circumstance be taken into account, but the decision says nothing about it — that too is the omission of a circumstance to be clarified.
Such details are directly appealable, because the law itself defines what the authority had to examine. The more precisely the omitted circumstance is named in the complaint, the stronger the position.
How a court recognises this norm
At the appeal stage Article 264 is especially effective, because it allows the decision to be assessed not by whether the conclusion is factually right, but by whether it is sufficiently reasoned. The court checks whether the authority posed every mandatory question and gave a motivated answer to each. Where a question — for instance the person's guilt or mitigating circumstances — was skipped, the decision rests on an incomplete basis, and that defect alone suffices for the position.
In preparing a complaint our team therefore checks precisely this list against the text of the decision: whether each mandatory circumstance has an answer, and if not, that becomes one of the main points of the complaint. This structural approach significantly raises the chances of a successful appeal.
In conclusion: Article 264 is a measure in the citizen's hands — a measure of how completely his or her case was examined. And that measure is given by the law itself.