The EU’s credibility in promoting democratic norms in the Western Balkans and Eastern Neighbourhood has been severely undermined by its notorious tolerance of autocratic leaders such as Vučić and the likes, and by internal dissensions that hinder the framing of a coherent crisis response. In Georgia, this failure is particularly stark, as the EU appears unable to effectively address Georgian Dream’s full drift toward consolidated authoritarianism. As opposition figure Marika Mikiashvili asks: “If the European Union cannot effectively respond to the situation in a small country with an overwhelmingly pro-European and resilient population, what does that say about the EU’s credibility?”

The elections of October 2024 only confirmed a dynamic that has been ongoing since the second term (2017) of oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili’s heavy political machinery, marked by mass protests against the repeated—and ultimately successful—attempts to pass a Russian-inspired law on the transparency of foreign influence. This period also saw the overall decay of the rule of law and the system of checks and balances, infringements on civil society and independent media, electoral malpractices, and the subjugation of security forces and the judiciary by the ruling party, already sanctionned by the EU with the freeze of the candidate country status following blatant violation of civic liberties and the rule of law during the 2024 wave of protests against the Foreign Agents Law.

Despite discordant voices within the EU, including those of the usual suspects (Slovakia and Hungary), the EU managed to display some degree of unity and resolve when addressing the obvious rigging of the general elections by Georgian Dream last October. Apart from the usual and weary expressions of concern about the deteriorating state of Georgian democracy, the policy of non-engagement with the illegally nominated government, the interruption of direct assistance, and the suspension of the visa liberalisation regime for holders of diplomatic passports might have borne some fruit in isolating and discrediting the regime—but not enough to reverse the course of authoritarian consolidation.

Indeed, the country has spiraled downward, with increasingly direct attacks against opposition forces, organised civil society, civic movements, and individual citizens who have taken to the streets to denounce the illegality and illegitimacy of Georgian Dream’s rule. Protesters have been violently dispersed and harassed daily by police forces and GD’s service d’ordre. The country’s energetic organised civil society has been relentlessly targeted through ungrounded corruption investigations and the misuse of the country’s legal apparatus. The work of a parliamentary commission supposedly investigating abuses under Saakashvili’s government has been directed against opposition leaders—six of whom have been arrested and incarcerated in the last week.

In addition, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, enforced in June, has cracked down swiftly on NGOs, research centres, and organisations that receive Western funding, engage in vaguely defined “political activity,” and may harbour or publicly express criticism of the government. Among those affected is the Eastern European Center for Multiparty Democracy—the partner organisation of our Horizon Europe project, RE-ENGAGE. "What we are witnessing today is the final stage of Russia’s hybrid warfare and state capture in Georgia. This is no longer just about silencing critics, it is a systematic dismantling of political pluralism and the total shutdown of civil society within the country” stresses our partner and friend Maia Machavariani, Director of Programmes at the Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy (EECMD).

With civil society weakened to the core—further exacerbated by the end of financial inflows from USAID—a fragmented political opposition with no clear short-term or long-term vision (participation in the October 2025 local elections remains a matter of discord), and an EU that may have reached the limits of what it is able to do to resolve the crisis, Georgian citizens increasingly rely on self-organised civic movements to keep up the good fight. During two fieldwork visits, conducted in the weeks before and after the 2024 elections and again in March 2025, yours truly was able to observe the vivacity of this repertoire of mobilisation, rooted in student plenums, mutualism, and citizen-to-citizen manifestations of solidarity.  As an illustration, during the Georgian parliamentary elections, three young activists acted as independent observers, already wary of potential fraud by the Georgian Dream government, though unaware of its full scale. In the interview I conducted with them a few days after, they emphasized that the fracture between the state and society did not occur under the first GD government and has only grown deeper and deeper since the first post-independence government of Gamsakhurdia.  They also expressed their skepticism in opposition parties, arguing that “political parties are obsolete in contexts like Georgia, they are not able to give us reforms because when, or if they come to power, the system will force them to do the same as the rest (of them) did”.

Their civic engagement is rooted in the idea that a real transformation of the political system will only happen from below, and that citizens must demand back the political arena that has been taken from them. One declared: “We don’t need another Rose Revolution, we need much more”.  They see lasting change as possible only through the pursuit of grassroots action and the commitment to bring about structural changes, insisting that “we don’t need another Rose Revolution, we need much more.” Despite the hardships and the repression faced by the activists, they are still holding up after more than 200 days of uninterrupted mobilisation, and resist the total capture of the institutions by a government governing against its citizens. 

Ultimately, I would like to conclude with the words of another friend and partner Ketevan Bolkvadze, who rightly noted, during a Zoom call two weeks ago, that this particular form of mobilisation might well be the clearest expression of the resilience and resistance of Georgian democracy.

 

RE-ENGAGE project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101132314