Full-on fighting broke out in the Georgian parliament, but the ruling Georgian Dream party was finally able to vote through the “foreign agent law” earlier this week. The anger among the protesters who gathered for just over a month on the streets of Tbilisi was great.
President Salome Zourabichvili, however, had promised to veto the law. Something she did on Saturday.
– Today I vetoed the law, it is in its essence, soul and foundation Russian, says Zourabichvili
The President: My duty to veto
However, the veto does not appear to make any difference in practice, as the president also admitted an interview on Friday. The ruling Georgian Dream party has a majority, which allows them to override the veto in parliament. Nevertheless, Zourabichvili chose to act.
– It is my duty under the constitution to do everything I can to support European integration, she told AP on Friday.
Zourabichvili believes that the law violates the constitution and constitutes an obstacle to Georgia’s stated goal of getting closer to Europe. As recently as last December, the country was granted candidate status for the EU.
Difficult road to EU membership
And the new law seems to put a damper on Georgia’s future EU membership. The EU has, among other things urged Georgia to withdraw it.
Hugo von Essen, an analyst at the Center for Eastern European Studies has previously described it as the “nail in the coffin” for Georgia’s European future.
– With this law, it is difficult to see that Georgia could move forward on its path towards EU membership. This is a full stop to the process, so to speak, it’s hard to see that the EU would in any way let Georgia get closer, said Hugo von Essen, an analyst at the Center for Eastern European Studies when the law was voted through.
At the same time, he pointed out that the EU may now be acting in a new way towards Georgia, where it stops working with the government and instead imposes sanctions on senior political leaders.
Seen as a rapprochement with Russia
The bill means that organizations must register with a “foreign agent” if they receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad. The law has been criticized from many quarters, including from the Swedish government.
It also entails strict reporting requirements and anyone who does not comply with the law can receive administrative penalties but also imprisonment. A similar law was voted through in 2012 in Russia, and the critics point out that Georgia is getting closer to Russia now that the law has been hammered through the parliament.