A “foreign agent” bill with the aim of disclosing non-national involvement in media and NGOs was passed by the Georgian parliament Wednesday night while protests—that have been going on for a month—continued to rock the capital city of Tbilisi.
The contentious bill requires NGOs and media outlets receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad both to register with the government and provide more detailed reports on their finances and activities. The governing Georgia Dream Party says the law is modelled on similar Western laws, including the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) which has been in place since 1938 and was also referred to as a model for the EU’s foreign influence transparency rules.
Opponents, however, refer to the bill as “the Russian Law,” saying it’s likely to be used to stifle anti-Russian advocacy within Georgia and hamper Georgia’s accession to the European Union.
Limiting foreign influence in national politics should not be a contentious issue—but it appears to depend on who’s doing the limiting, and who’s doing the influencing. While the EUs’ own foreign influence law—created in response to penetration efforts by Morocco and Qatar—was presented as ‘bolstering EU democracy,’ Eurocrats continue to wage a campaign of harassment against the Hungarian government for its sovereignty law which they claim to be silencing opposition voices and limiting freedom of speech.
Teargas and water cannons were deployed against anti-government protests outside the Georgian Parliament as tens of thousands rallied against the bill. Both the European Commission and the U.S. State Department condemned police violence against protestors on the streets of Tbilisi on Wednesday.
The law cleared the Georgian Parliament 83 to 23 Wednesday night. Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili has said she will veto the bill, but parliament only needs 76 votes to override her veto. Government officials indicated that the proposal would be formally signed into law in May. Georgia is holding parliamentary elections in October, where the Europhile opposition hopes to overthrow 12 years of rule by the Georgian Dream Party.
The recent protest wave emerged in mid-April during the first reading in parliament, with Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze calling the agitation an attack on conservative and religious moral values, as he himself was accused of being a pro-Kremlin stooge.
The controversy over the law is likely to complicate Georgia’s EU membership application. Eurocrats are concerned about latent pro-Russian sympathies within the government of Irakli Kobakhidze, increasingly so after the country’s former prime minister, Bidzina Ivanishvili, signalled his support for the foreign agents law. At a Monday rally in support of the legal changes, Ivanishvili—also the founder of the Georgian Dream party—said the bill would strengthen national sovereignty. He claimed financial support from foreign intelligence services to NGOs inside Georgia is feeding the pro-Western opposition in the country and described the EU and NATO as being hijacked by a “global party of war” using those institutions to undermine Georgian sovereignty.
Two nights of demonstrations led to the foreign agents bill being scrapped in March of last year, with many liberal commentators concerned about the risk of a potential Hungarian-Georgian alliance as Tbilisi prepares to join the EU by 2030.
Wednesday’s crackdown by Georgian security forces has prompted condemnation from most European foreign ministers. Ursula von der Leyen declared the country at a “crossroads” as she indicated the country’s EU membership application could be jeopardised.
Alleged media censorship, along with claims that Georgia was hampering EU sanctions against Moscow, resulted in the country’s EU application being frustrated in 2022.
While largely in favour of integration of Georgia into the EU and Euro-Atlantic community, many Eurocrats view the governing Georgian Dream Party as a geopolitical trojan horse. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced objections to the country’s EU membership to be moved up the agenda.
