A rally outside Georgia’s parliament in Tbilisi against the bill on “foreign agents”, 13 May 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE / DAVID MDZINARISHVILI
The European Union has decided to suspend Georgia’s accession process to the bloc, according to the EU ambassador to Tbilisi, Pawel Herczynski, whose comments were posted on X by the EU Delegation to Georgia on Tuesday.
According to Herczynski, the decision was made following the Georgian parliament’s adoption of a so-called “foreign agents” law, as well as what he called the “anti-Western” and “anti-European” rhetoric of the government in Tbilisi.
“Regrettably, Georgia’s EU accession process is stopped for now — this has been decided by EU leaders during the last European Council,” Herczynski said.
He added that the EU had frozen €30 million that had been allocated to support Georgia’s defence sector, and that further sanctions would be discussed later this year once parliamentary elections due in October had been held.
After years of making gradual progress on required democratic reform, Georgia was finally granted European Union candidate status in 2023 to widespread jubilation from the country’s young population.
However, since then, the ruling Georgian Dream party has increasingly sought to align the country with Russia, aping the Kremlin’s notorious legislation on “foreign agents”, which has been used as a tool for discrediting and silencing the Kremlin’s critics, and introducing a slew of anti-LGBT measures that have made its would-be European allies wary of further integration with the country.
“It is sad to see EU-Georgia relations at such a low point, when they could have been at an all-time high,” Herczynski said.
