The new legislation, including the Foreign Agents Registration Act and Law on Broadcasting, adopted by the Georgian Parliament on 2 April, without due public consultations, “gives additional tools to the Georgian authorities to suppress dissent and tighten the policy of repression”, senior EU officials have said in a statement.
EU High Representative Kaja Kallas and European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said in a joint statement that “these laws risk stigmatising the work of civic activists, threatening the survival of civil society and independent media, rolling back human rights protections, unduly restricting fundamental freedoms, and eroding democratic decision-making”.
“These steps further erode the foundations of democracy in Georgia,” the statement says. “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 will negatively impact Georgia’s EU path. Adherence to these EU values is not negotiable.”
They also added that a vast majority of Georgian people want Georgia to join the European Union and called on the Georgian authorities to demonstrate “a genuine and irreversible commitment” to returning to the EU path.
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