Georgia’s EU accession halted as country ‘has gone backwards’

TBILISI, Georgia — The European Commission is unlikely to recommend opening accession talks with Georgia in the near future, to judge by a report on the matter released Wednesday.

The document is another nail in the coffin of Georgia’s aspirations to join the European Union, hopes that took a big hit over the weekend as the anti-Western Georgian Dream party claimed 54 percent of votes in a contested election marred by violence at polling stations.

“Due to the course of action taken by the Georgian government, EU leaders have stopped Georgia’s access process,” the EU’s Ambassador to Georgia Pawel Herczynski said Wednesday as the EU published its final enlargement report.

“It remains on hold as long as Georgia continues to move away from the European Union, our values and our precedents,” said Herczynski, recalling Georgia’s backsliding in fighting disinformation and polarization and in protecting human rights.

“This year, Georgia has gone backwards.”

In 2023 the European Commission recommended granting Georgia candidate status on the condition that it address reforms in nine areas, including the ones Herczynski criticized for poor progress.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell emphasized that independent observers hadn’t declared Georgia’s parliamentary elections “free and fair,” and that Georgian authorities have been moving the country “away from the European Union, away from its values and principles.”

Objecting to the EU’s preconditions for Georgia’s further accession into the bloc, Georgian Dream doubled down on political polarization in the country and based its election campaign on a promise to ban virtually all opposition parties.

It also adopted controversial laws widely believed to have been borrowed from Russia’s playbook: a law on “foreign agents,” seen as instrumental in silencing government critics, and an “anti-LGBT propaganda” law that banned same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, gender-affirming care, and changing one’s gender on identity documents.

Despite international condemnation and warnings by EU officials that the accession process had been halted, Georgian Dream continued to claim it was committed to bringing Georgia into the EU. The ruling party promised in its election campaign that Georgia would join the bloc, but “on its own terms.”