On Wednesday 2 April, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas and European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos condemned the adoption earlier in the day by Georgia’s parliament, “without proper public consultation”, of new legislation, in particular “the Foreign Agents Registration Act and Law on Broadcasting”.
This legislation gives the Georgian authorities additional tools to repress dissent and toughen their policy of repression, emphasised Ms Kallas and Ms Kos in a joint statement. They added that these laws risk stigmatising the work of civic activists, threatening the survival of civil society and independent media, reducing human rights protection, unduly restricting fundamental freedoms and weakening democratic decision-making.
According to the high representative and the commissioner, these measures further undermine the foundations of democracy in Georgia. “Such actions are fundamentally incompatible with EU values of democracy, rule of law and media pluralism, and far from anything we would expect from a candidate country”, they said, adding that adherence to these European values is non-negotiable.
Recalling that a large majority of the Georgian population wants their country to join the EU, Ms Kallas and Ms Kos called on the authorities to show a sincere and irreversible commitment to returning to the EU path, which “requires stopping the violence against citizens, releasing all those unjustly detained, suspending repressive laws, consulting the Venice Commission, and engaging in a meaningful dialogue with civil society and all political actors to find a way out of the current crisis”. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)