When Georgia passed a foreign agents law targeting NGOs and some media organizations, it jeopardised the country’s prospects of joining the European Union. The European Council granted Georgia candidate status for EU membership in December 2023, but that was contingent upon addressing political polarization, ensuring free and fair elections, reforming the judiciary, strengthening anti-corruption mechanisms and curbing oligarchic influence.
The new law does the opposite. When the Georgian public realised that the ruling Georgian Dream party was more interested in its own power than implementing those reforms, it swiftly mobilised and took to the streets.
If only the EU had responded with the same urgency. Brussels did not immediately respond to the Georgian parliament’s adoption of the law on 14 May; media reports indicate that Hungary blocked a joint EU statement. High Representative Josep Borell issued a statement a day later, and again on 28 May when the parliament overrode the presidential veto. It took another month until the European Council called on Georgian authorities to reverse actions standing in the way of the country’s path towards membership.
Only then was the accession process effectively halted. The EU froze 30 million euros in military aid. More severe measures, including sanctions on high-level officials, are unlikely because they require unanimous agreement among EU member states. Hungary and Slovakia, no stranger to rule-of-law violations of their own, have reportedly blocked such measures.
Meaningful reform needed
The EU has contributed to stronger democratic norms in Georgia. However, fostering genuine respect for the rule of law needs more than quick legislative fixes that amount to little more than lip service to democracy. Meaningful reform requires sustainable changes in the mindset and behaviour of national political and judicial elites. The EU has overlooked this aspect while putting too much faith in the box-checking exercise of formal compliance in the course of the accession process.
Over the past decade, Bidzina Ivanishvili — a billionaire businessman with Russian connections and founder of Georgian Dream — has governed from behind the scenes and without accountability. Though he resigned as prime minister in 2013, after only one year in office, he sustained his influence through loyalists in key positions. Under his leadership, Georgian Dream has systematically dismantled checks and balances by capturing institutions meant to constrain the government. That includes the judiciary.
The EU was slow to detect this gradual erosion of democratic norms. As a result, it failed to more critically assess Georgia’s progress and adopt a more conditional approach. In reality, Georgian Dream has made little progress on fulfilling EU expectations since applying for membership in March 2022. This was a clear indication that Ivanishvili’s interests, including alignment with Russia, superseded integration with the EU. Rejecting a 75-million-euro loan from the EU to improve the judiciary — Georgian Dream claimed that the country’s courts outperformed those of some EU member states — is further evidence of how out of touch the government is with its overwhelmingly pro-EU public. These and other actions seemed aimed at appealing to uninformed voters ahead of October's parliamentary elections.
As the Georgian case illustrates, the EU's leverage can only go so far when national authorities lack genuine interest in EU accession. The EU can still promote the rule of law by clearly explaining its requirements to the public in candidate countries. This can help combat misinformation and authoritarian practices. EU involvement is crucial from an early stage, to nip autocratic entrenchment in the bud.
Democracy at home is democracy abroad
Yet the most important way to encourage rule of law outside the bloc is to defend it within the bloc. Despite polls that show favorable public perception of the EU from beyond its borders, internal issues undermine the EU’s soft power projection and embolden undemocratic elites in countries like Georgia. It is hard to hold non-EU states accountable to EU values when several EU member states, such as Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Greece, openly challenge these same values.
In Hungary, the most clear-and-present of these dangers, the ruling party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Fidesz, has advanced a political narrative claiming that Hungarian sovereignty needs to be protected against outside actors wishing to impose judicial and other rule-of-law reforms. We see an emerging trend of non-EU states replicating that playbook — and Georgia’s foreign agents law is a prime example.
The European Commission further complicated the situation when, as part of its Defence of Democracy package in December 2023, it proposed a “foreign interference” directive of its own. The initiative, resembling Georgian and other foreign agents laws, was criticised by NGOs due to potential negative impact on their activities.
If the EU cannot effectively defend its own democracy, no one can expect others to defend theirs. If the EU cannot advocate for democracy in candidate countries, no one can expect oligarchs and autocrats to do so on their own. In her statement as a candidate for Commission President on 18 July, Ursula von der Leyen emphasised the importance of spreading democracy through EU expansion. While she highlighted that accession to the EU is a merits-based process, she did not mention the recent backsliding seen in candidate states, including Georgia, or the Commission’s plans to address them.
Without a more adequate response to a rollback of democracy, rule of law and fundamental rights, we can expect to see growing public disillusionment and a further weakening of the values the EU says it stands for — both within the EU and in those countries that might like to join it.