Public administration in Georgia acts largely through administrative-legal acts: decisions, orders, resolutions, permits and refusals issued by administrative organs that directly affect the rights, obligations and legitimate interests of individuals and organisations. The General Administrative Code of Georgia establishes a dedicated mechanism for challenging such measures administratively — before the administration itself — so that a violated right can be restored without immediately resorting to litigation. This page describes that mechanism in full: what exactly can be challenged, which organ is competent to examine the complaint, the statutory appeal deadline and the rules for its restoration, the mandatory content of a written complaint, the examination timeline, the suspension of the challenged act during the examination, and the way the proceedings conclude.
What Can Be Challenged
Under the Code, an interested party has the right to challenge an administrative-legal act issued by an administrative organ. The protection is not confined to formally issued acts. If the administrative organ violates the time limit established for the issuance of an act, that violation is deemed to be a refusal to issue the act, and this deemed refusal is challengeable under the same procedure. Furthermore, an action of an administrative organ that is not connected with the issuance of an administrative-legal act is likewise challengeable under the same procedure, which extends the remedy to the organ's actual conduct beyond the sphere of formal paperwork.
There is, however, a boundary drawn around procedural measures: a decision of an administrative organ taken in connection with a matter of administrative proceedings is not subject to separate challenge, except where this is directly provided for by law or where the decision, independently of the corresponding administrative-legal act, infringes a person's right or legitimate interest. In other words, dissatisfaction with an internal procedural step becomes the proper subject of a complaint only when the law expressly allows it or when the step itself causes independent harm.
Which Organ Examines the Complaint
Unless the law or a subordinate act adopted on its basis provides otherwise, an administrative complaint is examined and decided by the administrative organ that issued the administrative-legal act — where there exists a superior official over the official who issued the act or over the relevant structural subdivision. Where the act was issued by the head of an administrative organ, the complaint concerning it is examined and decided by the superior administrative organ. This builds a two-step system of internal control: ordinarily the issuing organ itself reviews its own decision, while complaints against a head's acts ascend to the organ standing above it.
In parallel, judicial protection remains fully available: a person may apply to a court for the protection of his or her rights and freedoms under the procedure established by the Administrative Procedure Code of Georgia. The boundary between the administrative route and the judicial route in a given case is drawn by that procedural legislation — the General Administrative Code expressly defers court access to the rules of the Administrative Procedure Code rather than creating its own litigation procedure.
The Appeal Deadline of One Month
The central rule of the whole chapter is the time limit. An administrative complaint must be submitted within one month from the day of publication of the administrative-legal act or of its official notification, unless otherwise established by law. Where what is being challenged is an action of the administrative organ rather than an act, the action must be challenged within one month from the day on which the interested party became aware of the performance of the action or of the abstention from it.
Two qualifications shape this regime. First, where the organ has violated the time limit for issuing the act — the situation treated as a deemed refusal — no appeal deadline may be set at all, so a complaint against the silence of the administration is not barred by the passage of time. Second, where the appeal deadline has been missed, it must be restored if it was missed due to irresistible force or another valid reason.