Georgia: Government throws caution to the wind, reintroduces foreign agents bill
A showdown looms with EU accession hopes at stake.

In a move sure to spark a new wave of protests and unsettle Georgia’s European Union accession bid, the ruling Georgian Dream coalition has re-introduced a Russian-style bill that can curtail independent voices in the country. The text of the new bill, introduced April 3, is virtually the same as one that was withdrawn in March 2023 after sparking mass protests across Georgia.
The so-called foreign agents bill would require organizations receiving more than 20 percent of their annual budget from foreign sources to declare that they are “pursuing the interests of a foreign power,” or else face stiff fines. Critics say such legislation would give the government a powerful tool to muzzle NGO activists and independent media outlets, hindering watchdog activity of officials. They add that passage of the bill in its current form would facilitate the emergence of an authoritarian system in Georgia akin to Russia, where a similar so-called “foreign agent” legislation was used to crush civic freedoms.
Georgian Dream claims that the law will address issues with transparency among NGOs and media outlets. Shortly after the party’s parliamentary majority leader Mamuka Mdinaradze introduced the bill, the party released a statement saying that the “lack of transparency… is one of the most important challenges for state security.”
Opposition politicians were quick to assail the bill. Teona Akubardia, an MP and member of the Reforms Group, said the law “takes us back to the past.” MP Ana Tsitlidze of the United National Movement said that “[Bidzina] Ivanishvili’s party and the European integration of Georgia are incompatible,” referring to the founder of Georgian Dream.
The reintroduced bill is just the latest in a string of illiberal policy actions taken by the government that threaten to derail the country’s hopes for EU membership. Brussels gave a green-light to Georgia’s candidacy late last year, but attached conditions, including a need to implement reforms protecting free speech and other basic rights. Just last week, Georgian Dream unveiled plans for constitutional changes that would codify discrimination against LGBTQ-identifying Georgians.
The EU Delegation in Georgia did not immediately respond to Eurasianet’s request for comment on the reintroduction of the “foreign agent” bill.
The reintroduction stands to give a large segment of Georgian society a sense of whiplash. On March 7, 2023, Georgian Dream’s parliamentary majority first approved a similar bill. That action prompted large-scale protests across the country. Parliament withdrew the bill three days later.
Just over a year later, the bill will again take center stage.
The bill would kneecap what many consider to be the only counterweight to Georgian Dream’s dominating parliamentary majority: the civil society sector. “Considering there is no proper institutional checks and balances in the country, the civil society [sector] serves [as] a bastion of democracy,” said Giorgi Revishvili, former senior adviser to the National Security Council of Georgia.
Despite its solid grip on power, Georgian Dream received less than half of the votes in Georgia’s most recent elections in 2020. Election rules, however, handed the party a dominating majority in parliament. The government’s policy course in recent years has had a polarizing effect on a society in which a solid majority firmly backs EU membership.
The immediate effect of the bill could be the silencing of government critics during the run-up to parliamentary elections scheduled for this October. But Kornely Kakachia, director of the Georgian Institute of Politics, told Eurasianet the legislation could prove detrimental for Georgian Dream’s political fortunes by mobilizing undecided or currently apathetic voters, while galvanizing the country’s fragmented political opposition to form a viable coalition.
“I think they [Georgian Dream leaders] touched nerves which can embolden even people who are not active at all with politics,” he said of the foreign agent bill.
That said, far more is on the line this year than last, and if mass protests oppose the legislation, they will be confronted by a more emboldened government, Kakachia said. He added that it is unlikely the bill will be retracted as it was last year because doing so a second time would deal a massive blow to Georgian Dream’s image. “That could be the start of the demise of the regime,” he told Eurasianet.
Georgian Dream’s statement shortly after the bill’s introduction reflects an understanding of its failure to pass the bill in 2023, as well as a hardened position. It specifically discredits those who opposed the legislation last year as members of the “radical opposition” who angled to disrupt Georgia’s natural political discourse.
“This year, everyone will have to enter into a substantive discussion, which will show the public the scale of the lies that they have inflicted on the Georgian public,” the statement reads. It concludes with the dubious assertion that the law will “protect Georgia from artificial attempts to cause unrest in the country.”
Brawley Benson is a Tbilisi-based reporter and recent graduate of the Columbia Journalism School who writes about Russia and the countries around it. Follow him on X at @BrawleyEric.
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