Potential restrictions on gender reassignment surgery and the ability of homosexual couples to adopt children could put Georgia on a collision course with the European Union. The South Caucasus nation is attempting to enshrine pro-family values in law, just months after it was given candidate status by Brussels.
Right on cue, the usual assortment of human rights organisations were quick to condemn Tbilisi’s ruling Dream Party for its attempts to legislate against certain types of LGBT militancy before planned elections in October. The legal initiative seems designed to bolster support among social conservatives.
Mamuka Mdinaradze, the government MP leading the legislative charge, declared that the new laws would protect his country’s Christian heritage against “pseudo-liberal values,” as Georgia prepares to potentially enter the EU by 2030—a perceived safeguard against future Russian aggression.
The invasion of Ukraine has prompted Georgia, which has been governed by the right-wing Georgian Dream Party since 2012, to rethink its relationship with the West, making the country’s politics increasingly divided by the drift towards EU integration many now feel is inevitable.
There is unease both in Brussels and Tbilisi that the Kremlin may reignite the 2008 irredentist conflict in contested regions in the north of the country. Observers express concern that the European Commission is accelerating the accession process for political reasons alone, without taking in the proper economic considerations. Enlarging Western institutions close to Russia’s borders is also viewed as potentially provocative.
Eurocrats also fear an embryonic Hungarian-Georgian illiberal alliance taking shape, as geopolitical factors force Brussels to fast-track the membership applications of various other post-Soviet countries, including Ukraine and Moldova, as well as the Western Balkans, in a move many predict will upset the traditional balance of power in the already divided bloc.
In an example of Tbilisi’s more right-wing stances, Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili gave a speech lambasting the global transgender agenda at last year’s conservative CPAC conference in Budapest.
Only last year, European and American-backed protests erupted on the streets of Tbilisi over a bill curtailing Russian and Western NGOs, in a move observers described as protecting the country against outside liberal influence.
Georgian ultranationalists and members of the Orthodox clergy have repeatedly clashed with police attempting to disrupt various Pride events in the capital, with many pro-Western observers believing that pro-Kremlin tendencies lurk within the ruling Dream Party. It appears that the country is preparing to join the EU while taking the ‘Hungarian approach’ to some of its domestic policies.
While ostensibly limiting its influence over the social policy of member states, the European Commission has used the wedge of LGBT issues in various ‘rule-of-law’ disputes, including the overthrow of conservative rule in Warsaw, where the new Tusk government was promised billions of dollars in funding in exchange for liberalising the country’s supposedly ‘homophobic’ laws.
The Hungarian Institute of International Affairs has previously suggested that Brussels risks “politicising its own enlargement process” in how it deals with nations such as Georgia, with EU elites struggling to maintain ideological control as it expands to the East.
