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Amnesty International, a UK-based human rights organization, said Georgia’s ruling party has built a “sophisticated architecture of repression” over the 500 days of protests through what it described as restrictive legislation, police abuses, disinformation campaigns, and judicial practices aimed at suppressing dissent. In a June 15 report titled “Georgia: Anatomy of Repression: 500 Days of Protest, Crackdown and Resilience,” the organization examined developments since the Georgian Dream government announced on November 28, 2024, that it would halt the country’s EU accession process until 2028. “Since spring 2024, and especially since the mass daily protests that began on 28 November 2024, the authorities have used the full machinery of the state to deter, punish and extinguish dissent,” the watchdog said, adding that the information space has been “weaponized” to brand civil society organizations, independent media, opposition figures, and protesters as “foreign agents,” “extremists” or “threats to national security.” It added that “these narratives have not remained rhetorical” and “they have often been followed by harassment, physical attacks, investigations, prosecutions, asset freezes and other punitive measures.” “Georgia’s experience over the last three years is a cautionary tale of how governments can rapidly turn state institutions into potent tools of repression for the sake of entrenching their own power,” said Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to the organization’s press release. The report said that Georgian authorities have built “a sophisticated architecture of repression, and “what took many years to develop in other contexts has been assembled in Georgia with striking speed: a coordinated system in which disinformation, restrictive laws, abusive policing and weaponized judicial processes reinforce one another in a quest to entrench power.” According to the organization, “thousands have experienced arrest,” while “hundreds of people have been beaten in the streets, humiliated in detention and subjected to torture or other ill-treatment.” It further said that more than 150 protesters, activists, and government critics have been imprisoned following what it described as “politically motivated and unfair proceedings, with little prospect of finding justice.” The report argued that civic space in Georgia has been “severely restricted,” as organizations assisting victims of abuses have faced threats, attacks, investigations, asset freezes, and operational restrictions, while “independent journalists have been physically targeted, harassed, prosecuted, cut off from funding and pushed into ‘survival mode’.” The report also criticized a series of legislative amendments adopted by the Georgian Dream “with no meaningful consultation,” that have “unduly restricted the rights to freedom of association, expression, including media freedom, and peaceful assembly.” It further argued that “measures framed as protecting ‘transparency’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘public order’ or ‘family values’ have in practice imposed intrusive state control, introduced sweeping police powers, heavy fines, administrative and criminal liability, suffocating Georgia’s once vibrant civil society.” According to the organization, the police have been given a “new legal architecture to increase its coercive force,” as they have repeatedly used “unlawful and punitive force against largely peaceful protesters, including beatings and arbitrary arrests,” adding that the “misuse of less lethal weapons has affected thousands of protestors and injured many more.” It said that “the coordinated nature of these abuses points to a state-sanctioned pattern of punishment,” arguing that effective investigations into alleged police abuses have been “rare,” as “Senior officials implicated in violent crackdowns have avoided accountability.” * 07/05/2026 – Georgia Announces First Arrests Over Police Abuses During 2024 Protests The report also criticized Georgia’s judiciary, arguing that courts have “effectively enforced and legitimized the criminalization of peaceful protest” and have turned into “tools of rubber-stampers of injustice” by “punishing dissent, financially exhausting protesters and giving repression the veneer of legality.” “As this report shows, this is not a chain of isolated abuses but rather a system of authoritarian practices intended to entrench power, where the formal appearance of the rule of law remains intact but its substance has been hollowed out,” the report concludes. Recommendations * Calls on Georgian Authorities Amnesty International called on the Georgian authorities to halt “smearing campaigns” against dissent, saying that “all those affected must receive full and adequate reparation, including truth, restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, and guarantees of non-repetition.” It also called on the authorities to “cease the use, and threats of use, of tax investigations, funding inquiries, and abuse of other regulatory mechanisms as instruments of harassing and delegitimizing media outlets.” The organization called for the repeal of controversial legislation, including the Foreign Agents Law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Law on Grants, Broadcasting Law, amendments that penalized verbal insults against officials and amendemnts on “Speech and Expression” ensuring that “all national legislation regulating civil society organizations is brought in full conformity with Georgia’s international human rights obligations regarding the right to freedom of association, including the right to seek, receive and utilize resources from foreign and international sources.” The organization also called for “prompt, thorough, independent, impartial and effective investigations into all allegations of unlawful force during protests, including the use of tear gas, water cannons, and batons by police,” and urged the authorities to cooperate with “an independent international investigation into the chemical substances deployed against protesters in 2024 and 2025, should such an investigation be initiated.” It further called on the authorities to ensure independent investigations into allegations of torture and other ill-treatment of people detained during the 2024-2025 protests, with the probe extended “to senior commanders who directed or acquiesced.” Regarding the judiciary, the report urged Georgia to conduct an independent review of all criminal convictions of protesters and activists imposed since 2024. “All convictions found to have resulted from unfair proceedings must be quashed and those imprisoned released.” * Recommendations to International Partners Amnesty International also addressed the European Union, the Council of Europe, and other international partners, calling on them to “maintain and expand support to NGOs, human rights defenders and media outlets affected by smearing and disinformation campaigns.” The report advised the international partners to “call on the Georgian government to repeal and amend the repressive legislation that is unduly restricting the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly,” and support the Venice Commission’s work in “assessing Georgia’s legislative programme and press the Georgian government to implement their recommendations in full.” It further urged the EU to “impose an immediate and comprehensive embargo on the sale and transfer of all policing equipment to Georgia, including less-lethal weapons, surveillance technology, and vehicles, until an independent investigation into the use of chemical agents and other unlawful and abusive use of force by police has been completed, those responsible are held to account, and credible accountability mechanisms are in place.” The organization also urged the international partners to “initiate investigations by the OPCW [Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] into the allegations regarding the use of chemical weapons against protesters to the OPCW and press for Georgian cooperation with any resulting investigation.” * 15/01/2026 – Georgian Dream Says It Filed Complaint with BBC Over Camite Investigation The report additionally called on the Council of Europe and other international institutions to strengthen oversight of Georgia’s compliance with human rights obligations, monitor detention conditions of imprisoned protesters and opposition figures, and support the implementation of relevant judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and recommendations issued by international human rights bodies. Also Read: * 13/06/2026 – CoE Ministers Committee Calls on Georgia to Revise Freedom of Assembly Laws * 21/04/2026 – Georgia ‘Plunged Head-On Into Authoritarian Practices’, Amnesty Says in 2025 Report * 20/04/2026 – Georgia in Freedom House Report Among Six New Countries Using ‘Tactics of Transnational Repression’ * 17/03/2026 – V-Dem Institute Report Again Classifies Georgia as ‘Electoral Autocracy’

The State Security Service of Georgia (SSSG) has opened criminal proceedings against former Georgian Railway CEO Davit Peradze and seven other individuals over an alleged large-scale corruption scheme. Six of them were detained, while two, including Peradze, were declared wanted. The alleged criminal scheme involves, among other claims, large-scale fraud, abuse of official position, document forgery, and money laundering. If convicted, the suspects face nine to twelve years in prison. Davit Peradze headed Georgian Railway from 2017 until May 2025, when he was replaced by Lasha Abashidze. Peradze reportedly had close ties with Georgian Dream founder and Honorary Chairman Bidzina Ivanishvili. From 2007 to 2011, he held several roles at Ivanishvili’s Cartu Group, and from 2014 to 2017, he served as director of Mtkvari HES Ltd., a hydro-energy project backed by Ivanishvili’s Co-Investment Fund. Alleged Scrap Metal Scheme Emzar Gagnidze, director of the SSSG’s Anti-Corruption Agency, announced the alleged criminal scheme at the June 16 briefing. According to him, in the fall of 2019, Peradze formed an “organized criminal group acting in coordination and with a structured form” to fraudulently seize large amounts of property belonging to JSC Georgian Railway. The scheme was designed so that scrap metal belonging to the state company would be collected, transported, cut, and sorted for subsequent sale “in such a form that it would become impossible to determine its exact original quantity.” At the same time, Magradze added, pre-selected companies were used to create false tax documents that would give the stolen metal an “ostensibly legal origin” before it was sold on. “Davit Peradze gradually involved numerous persons in the criminal scheme, including the then Infrastructure Director of JSC Georgian Railway. Also involved in the criminal scheme was another person who had actual control over several business entities: LLC ‘Kakheti’, LLC ‘Nova Transi,’ LLC ‘Jadeksa,’ LLC ‘Construction and Repair Company Khuro,’ and LLC ‘Grand Kakheti’,” the SSSG official said. He added that “in accordance with the criminal agreement,” Georgian Railway announced two tenders on February 8 and September 9, 2020, for the procurement of services for the transportation, sorting, cutting, and collection of scrap metal. LLC Kakheti, which was under the “actual control of persons involved in the criminal scheme, was declared the winner,” he said. “Bypassing authorized employees of JSC Georgian Railway,” Gagnidze said, one person ensured that the scrap metal to be removed was taken from the railway “without counting and weighing, and in some cases with artificially reduced quantities” recorded in documents. He added that documents were arranged so that “it would become impossible in the future to identify the person responsible for the existence of a shortage,” leading to the write-off of missing material from the company’s balance sheet. Part of the collected metal was allegedly transported directly to the Rustavi-based company LLC Geostil instead of being stored in warehouses, Maghradze said, adding that in order to conceal the metal’s criminal origin and facilitate its sale, the group allegedly produced “false tax documents” for the business entities participating in the crime. Maghradze added that “during 2020–2021, through deception and with the intent of unlawful appropriation, a total of 22,120 tons of scrap metal belonging to JSC Georgian Railway was seized,” which, after a change of origin, was “purchased by LLC Geostil for GEL 17,391,121. The funds received from LLC ‘Geostil’ were accumulated in the bank accounts of LLC ‘Nova Transi’ and LLC ‘Jadeksa’, and were periodically withdrawn in cash and distributed among the group members.” The investigation also covers a separate contract allegedly signed on April 29, 2022, between Georgian Railway and LLC Raveld for the repair of railway-track defects. According to Maghradze, the contract was worth USD 999,768 and provided for the welding of up to 1,600 rail units, with payments tied to “acceptance-transfer acts.” Maghradze said that the director of LLC Raveld, “acting in agreement with Georgian Railway’s then-Infrastructure Director,” deliberately inflated the number of completed rail welds in official documents. The records claimed that 1,200 rail units had been welded, while investigators say only 987 were actually completed. The false documents were signed by Georgian Railway employees under the instruction of the infrastructure director, the agency said. As a result, Raveld received an excess payment of GEL 403,844. “Active investigative actions continue at the Anti-Corruption Agency of the State Security Service for the purpose of identifying other members of the organized group and implementing the measures provided for by law against them,” Maghradze warned. Also Read: * 22/05/2026 – State Security Service Arrests Former Deputy Chief Levan Akhobadze on Bribery Allegations * 05/05/2026 – SSSG Arrests Georgian Official, Who Had Worked for Ivanishvili’s Cartu Group, on Espionage Allegations * 25/04/2026 – Former Employee Arrested on Accusations of ‘Taking Out Classified Information’ From SSSG

The British Embassy in Georgia said on June 16 that the United Kingdom’s new sanctions package against Russia includes the vessel Silvar, which, according to the embassy, “accessed a Georgian port earlier this year.” The vessel, identified as “IMO 9291262 (SILVAR)” in the United Kingdom’s latest Russia sanctions designations, is listed among the ships “involved in transporting Russian oil to third countries.” The ship is among a total of 70 new targets, which, according to the UK government, include “Russia’s decrepit shadow fleet, military procurement supply chains and illicit finance networks used to circumvent sanctions.” “The UK has now sanctioned almost 500 individuals, entities and ships under its Russia sanctions regime in 2026 alone, as allied support for Ukraine tops the G7 agenda,” the UK government said. The announcement came just two days after British authorities seized the Russian “shadow fleet” vessel Smyrtos in the English Channel, with Georgia’s Maritime Transport Agency confirming on June 15 that three Georgian citizens were among the 24 crew members aboard. Silvar in Georgian Port While the British Embassy has not provided any further details about the vessel, a February 5 report by Georgia’s investigative outlet iFact said that Silvar, then sanctioned by Ukraine, entered Georgia’s territorial waters on January 30, 2026. According to the outlet, citing Ukrainian intelligence, the vessel was part of Russia’s “shadow fleet.” It added that it entered Kulevi port on Georgia’s coast a day after departing Russia’s Novorossiysk oil terminal. iFact estimated that the tanker unloaded “up to 24,000 tons of oil or petroleum products” at Kulevi port between February 2 and 6 before departing for Istanbul, where the outlet said it was expected to arrive on February 8. iFact further said the vessel’s owner and management companies were also sanctioned by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom in 2024 and 2025. The outlet said that, at the time of its report, the vessel was owned by an Indian company. Kulevi Controversy The Kulevi oil refinery, operated by Georgian company Black Sea Petroleum, has been under scrutiny in recent months over its alleged role in facilitating Russian oil exports. The controversy also extended to Kulevi port, which, on the other hand, is owned and operated by Azerbaijan’s SOCAR. The port was initially considered for inclusion in the European Union’s 20th sanctions package against Russia. The EU ultimately decided not to include the port in the package, citing “positive commitments” by Georgian authorities and the terminal’s operator, SOCAR. Also Read: * 27/05/2026 – UK Sanctions Three Georgia-Registered Companies in Crackdown on Russia Sanctions Evasion * 26/01/2026 – Stressing Sanctions Compliance, Kobakhidze Cites 2,658 Cases of Customs Refusals in 2025 * 12/01/2026 – Revenue Service Stresses Georgia’s Sanctions Compliance Over Russian-Origin Oil Shipment * 19/12/2025 – UK Calls on Georgia to Curb Russian Oil Imports Amid Wider Sanctions * 22/10/2025 – Russian Company Supplies First Oil Cargo to Georgia’s New Kulevi Refinery

Three Georgian citizens were among the 24 crew members aboard the sanctioned vessel Smyrtos, seized by British authorities in the English Channel, the Maritime Transport Agency of Georgia stated on June 15, citing confirmation from London. The statement came a day after the UK government said British armed forces intercepted the Russian “shadow fleet” vessel in what it described as “the first UK-led operation of its kind.” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer praised the operation, saying in a post on X that it “delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide.” According to Georgia’s Maritime Transport Agency, citing confirmation from British authorities, “all seafarers are safe” and “there is no threat to their health or well-being.” “We would like to emphasize that the legislation currently in force in Georgia, as well as the Agency’s regulatory instruments, require crewing companies to conduct stringent sanctions screening and prohibit the employment of seafarers on vessels or with shipowners that are subject to sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the European Union, the United States of America, or the United Kingdom,” the agency said. It added that the seized vessel, SMYRTOS (IMO 9389100), “was not identified in the employment, recruitment, or seafarer placement records of any recognised Georgian crewing company,” and “accordingly, the employment of the seafarers concerned was not facilitated by companies recognised by the Maritime Transport Agency of Georgia.” The agency further said it continues to cooperate with the relevant British authorities and is closely monitoring the ongoing investigation, adding that ensuring “full compliance” with international sanctions regimes remains among its “highest priorities.” According to the BBC, Smyrtos began its journey on June 5 from Russia’s Ust-Luga port near St. Petersburg before crossing west into the English Channel. The agency added that the vessel was sanctioned in July 2025 and has since changed its name from Myrtos to Smyrtos, as well as the flag under which it sails, twice. The National Crime Agency, the UK’s national law enforcement agency, said on June 15 that an Indian national was arrested on suspicion of sanctions offenses in connection with the seized vessel and has been taken into custody, with the investigation continuing. Georgians were also among the crew of another Russian “shadow fleet” tanker, Marinera, which was intercepted by the United States in the North Atlantic in January. Reports at the time said six Georgians were on board, including the captain. Also Read: * 27/05/2026 – UK Sanctions Three Georgia-Registered Companies in Crackdown on Russia Sanctions Evasion * 10/03/2026 – EU Drops Kulevi Port Sanctions, Citing ‘Commitments’ from Georgia, SOCAR * 26/01/2026 – Stressing Sanctions Compliance, Kobakhidze Cites 2,658 Cases of Customs Refusals in 2025 * 12/01/2026 – Revenue Service Stresses Georgia’s Sanctions Compliance Over Russian-Origin Oil Shipment * 19/12/2025 – UK Calls on Georgia to Curb Russian Oil Imports Amid Wider Sanctions

Georgia’s disputed Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili criticized remarks by the EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos implying “new safeguards” to prevent new members from misusing veto powers, calling the idea “dangerous” and a “legal segregation of countries,” and warning that its adoption would fundamentally alter the union Georgia applied to join in 2022. Papuashvili’s criticism came after Kos, speaking on the sidelines of the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting on June 15, was asked how the bloc could ensure that future members such as Ukraine would not use their veto to block important foreign affairs decisions. In response, Kos said: “This will be a new generation of accession treaties in the sense that we will have new safeguards which will do, or provide, exactly what you have mentioned: how to make sure that once we get new members on board, they will follow European rules, being a member five, ten, or fifteen years after. So we will discuss every country once we come to the point of having an accession treaty.” Posting on Facebook in Georgian and on X in English alongside a screenshot of a Ukrainian media outlet’s headline (“European Commission confirmed that the right of veto for new member states will be discussed”), Papuashvili argued that the proposal would mean that when moving to the membership stage, Georgia, like other new members, “would have obligations similar to those of other EU members, but would not be equal to them in terms of rights.” Kos “noted that the European Union is considering an idea under which future EU member states would not have the same voting rights as current members,” Papuashvili said, adding that in practice, “this means that the EU would be able to make decisions on matters of existential importance to Georgia’s national interests without Georgia’s actual participation.” “Many will probably recall the phrase often repeated by Brussels: ‘Nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine.’ The idea being discussed in the EU is precisely the abandonment of this approach, not only toward Ukraine, but toward all candidate countries. Ukrainians have also recognized this clearly and have stated that they would not agree to second-class membership,” he noted. The speaker further argued that the EU’s motto, “United in Diversity,” is being replaced by the principle of “Do not deviate from the general line,” claiming that candidate countries would be admitted only if their voices served a “merely decorative function.” Papuashvili said: “Indeed, such an approach would make decision-making even easier as there would be no need for difficult discussions, differing positions, or that aspect of democracy, which involves dissenting opinions.” He described the initiative as “Brussels’ idea of introducing a legal segregation of countries,” contraditory to the bloc’s rules-based system, which “radically changes this founding principle of the EU and transforms it from a union of equal nations into a union of ‘first-class’ and ‘second-class’ nations.” “Therefore, one thing must be stated clearly: if this idea is implemented, it will no longer be the union that Georgia applied to join four years ago. Nor will it be the union that is envisioned in Article 78 of Georgia’s Constitution,” Papuashvili said. He then drew parallels with Georgia’s Soviet past, saying, “Georgia has already had 70 years of experience with nominal and unequal membership in a [Soviet] union, and we do not intend to repeat that experience. If the post-Soviet countries that are already EU members allow such a change to happen, it will appear that their problem was not with the Soviet Union itself, but rather with who dominates such a union.” Papuashvili further claimed that “EU should immediately stop entertaining this dangerous idea,” adding that “even [if] it is never adopted, the damage has already been done. Raising this suggestion tells us how EU views its forthcoming members: as less equal than the others, in Orwellian sense.” In recent years, Hungary under previous Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has emerged as one of the Georgian Dream government’s closest European partners, even as Tbilisi’s relations with its traditional Western allies have deteriorated amid concerns of the Georgian ruling party’s anti-democratic and anti-Western moves. Budapest has also reportedly used its veto power to block stronger EU measures, including sanctions, in response to developments in Georgia following the disputed 2024 parliamentary elections. Also Read: * 21/04/2026 – Kos: EU to Involve Georgia in Connectivity to Extent Tbilisi’s Willing to Engage ‘On Other Areas’ * 04/11/2025 – Georgia ‘Candidate Country in Name Only’ – EU Commission Adopts 2025 Enlargement Package * 03/06/2025 – Commissioner Kos: Georgia ‘Reminder’ of Setbacks on EU Path

First fines were reported over “insults” and “petty hooliganism” against both a Georgian Dream official and an opposition figure as the Interior Ministry’s newly established unit tasked with monitoring “hate speech” in public reported submitting up to 60 cases to courts since the start of operation on June 1. In both cases, the court reportedly issued rulings without hearing the position of those subject to “insults.” The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) said on June 15 that seven of up to 60 cases have already resulted in rulings, while preparatory hearings have been scheduled in 30 cases. The announcement comes as first two fines were reported over alleged “insults” against Georgian Dream lawmaker Nino Tsilosani and opposition Ahali party leader Nika Gvaramia, with the later saying that he was unaware of the proceedings. On June 15, lawyer Shota Tutberidze said that he was fined GEL 4,000 [USD 1,500] by Tbilisi City Court in one of the “hate-speech division” cases after being found guilty of insulting Tsilosani. The case reportedly refers to Tutberidze’s Facebook comment posted on June 2 on a Facebook post by Tsilosani, who was visiting Canada at the time. Tutberidze was fined under Article17316, which covers insulting a public official and is punishable by a fine from GEL 1,500 to GEL 4,000 or administrative detention of up to 45 days. Tutberidze told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Georgian service that the court was unaware of Tsilosani’s stance. He said the defence asked the court “how can an act of insult be established if you do not find out whether someone felt offended, especially Nino Tsilosani, who was neither interviewed nor questioned?” Against initial reports that the fine against Tutberidze was the first ruling in the cases launched by the division, the Interior Ministry said that first actual judgment was delivered on June 12 by the Oni Magistrate Court. In a separate case, it was reported on June 16 that a person, Giorgi Gedenidze, was fined GEL 2,000 [USD 755] for “petty hooliganism” as part of similar proceedings for allegedly writing an offensive comment about opposition Ahali party leader Nika Gvaramia on June 3 on a social media post of pro-government Imedi TV channel. Gvaramia wrote on Facebook that he learned about the ruling from media, and that he was unaware of both Gedenidze’s identity and the fact of the offense. “If I am not offended, is it that the state ‘protects’ my dignity without my position?” Gvaramia asked, adding, “It wasn’t enough that they fine me and arrest me and now I have to worry about others being fined because of me.” MIA told Civil.ge that Gedenidze was fined under Article 166 of the Administrative Offence Code, which covers petty hooliganism” and includes “swearing in a public space, offensive targetting of citizens, and other similar acts that disturb public order and/or citizens’ peace.” The Ministry said that the article does not require a complaint from a citizen for authorities to respond. The offence is punishable by a fine from GEL 500 to GEL 3,000 or administrative detention of up to 20 days. The Division for Combating Hate Speech began operating on June 1 with an initial staff of ten people within the ministry’s Human Rights Protection Department. The division is tasked with monitoring and proactively identifying publicly disseminated statements that allegedly violate human dignity, contain insults, or constitute hate speech under Georgia’s Administrative Offenses Code. The unit is also responsible for identifying alleged offenders, establishing their identities, preparing administrative case materials, drafting offense reports, and referring cases to courts in accordance with jurisdictional rules. Also Read: * 20/05/2026 – ECtHR Finds No Violation of Freedom of Expression in Georgian Activist’s Viral TikTok Case * 18/04/2026 – Ivanishvili’s Son Laments ‘Violence’, ‘Polarization’, Calls for ‘Discussion, Debate’ * 09/07/2025 – Activist Jailed for Five Days Over “Insult” in Facebook Comment * 12/06/2025 – Politicians, Journalists, Activists Summoned to Court Over Social Media “Insults” to GD MPs * 06/06/2025 – Georgian Dream to Sue Critics Over “Insults” on Social Media

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić is visiting Georgia, marking his first official trip to the country. Accompanied by his wife and a state delegation, Vučić arrived at Tbilisi airport on June 15, where he was welcomed by Georgian Dream Economy Minister Mariam Kvrivishvili, who said the visit would be of “the utmost importance” for strengthening “trade and economic ties” between the two countries, noting that negotiations on a free trade agreement are currently underway. The Serbian leader has already met with Georgian Dream–elected President Mikheil Kavelashvili, with further meetings with GD officials expected. The visit comes amid closer ties between Georgia and Serbia, both EU candidate countries that received rather negative assessments in the European Commission’s 2025 Enlargement Report. It also comes against the backdrop of political crises in both countries, marked by anti-government movements that emerged around the same period in 2024. Vučić’s trip to Tbilisi takes place nearly six months after Kavelashvili’s visit to Belgrade in December 2025. Meeting with Mikheil Kavelashvili On June 15, Vučić held a one-on-one meeting with Kavelashvili following a ceremonial reception at the Orbeliani Presidential Palace in downtown Tbilisi. According to a social media statement by Kavelashvili, they discussed “close friendly relations” between the two countries, “cultural affinity,” “shared values,” and “current geopolitical challenges,” as well as “the need to deepen cooperation” in political, economic, technological, educational, and scientific-research fields. “I noted that our cultural identity and the complex challenges facing both states create a strong basis for the further development of bilateral relations and for supporting each other’s positions on the international stage,” Kavelashvili said, adding, “We discussed ongoing political developments in both countries and also focused on the importance of ensuring global peace, security, and stability.” More to follow… Also Read: * 18/01/2023 – PM Garibashvili Meets Serbian President

Georgian civil servants knew perfectly well that what they were doing was low-key. Rewriting a procurement regulation was never a heroic act. Harmonizing a food safety standard with a European directive drew no applause, and documentary filmmakers had perhaps something more exciting to do than point their cameras at someone sitting in their office for weeks, comparing Georgian legal text with Brussels’ language. Yet those working in the public service did all this with a sense of purpose, a belief that they were each a small and necessary piece of something much larger than themselves. Then that sense left, and so did the people, slowly and quietly. All that is left is memory and inertia — the momentum is gone --- Ana Kvernadze is a public policy consultant with experience in governance, social policy, and reform. --- The public apparatus that Georgia inherited from the Soviet Union was a particular kind of self-reinforcing order, in which everyone understood the real rules while reciting formal ones with straight faces. The gap between what the state claimed to be and what it actually was had become so familiar that most simply stopped noticing it, just as you stop noticing a crack in a ceiling that you’ve been staring at for the past twenty years. The generation of reformers who came to power after the Rose Revolution knew that one cannot modernize a system that has been designed, through decades of accumulated dysfunction, to resist modernization from within, so they never tried. Instead, they chose to demolish and rebuild. The work went at times faster than was wise, and at times ignorant of what was lost in the process. But it was vibrant, something very rare for the post-Soviet world and very new for the ordinary Georgians, who had spent their adult lives learning to expect nothing from the state and suddenly faced a whole new reality. Then, advancing on its European Integration path, Georgia launched formal talks on the Association Agreement (AA) in 2010, under the United National Movement (UNM) government. When Georgian Dream came to power in 2012, they inherited the AA process and brought it to signature in 2014. The smooth transition meant that Georgia’s state bureaucracy could still present itself as an institutional machine capable of carrying a strategic national project across an electoral rupture. Bureaucracy of Belonging The initial years of opening up to European reforms passed under the shadow of quiet, familiar anxieties of a small, liberalised economy being asked to absorb the regulatory weight of Europe. But slowly, the work on AA gave the Georgian public administration a clearer direction. The reforms penetrated state institutions through both the legislative process and the everyday work of an entire generation of public servants and policy professionals. They were meant to create a habit of building a country in which an ordinary Georgian might look around and conclude, without heroic optimism, that staying was more rational than leaving. Every chapter of the agreement fell on somebody’s desk and created a human obligation. By that, it also created a civil servant who had to read a directive drafted in Brussels for twenty-seven member states, extract what it meant for a country of four million with its own history of institutional dysfunction, draft the necessary changes to Georgian laws, push those changes through a legislative process with its own inertia and appetite for delay, and then somehow ensure that what had been written down was actually practiced by the border officials, police, or regulators who had spent their careers in the world where you could change overnight the laws but not the work culture. People in the public service who carried out this work were, for the most part, young and proud in a way that may sound naïve, though it was not naive at all. State functionaries would return from Brussels technical working groups with a kind of borrowed confidence, the sense of having sat at a table where serious countries conducted serious business and having held their own. Donor organizations would arrive with funding and expertise, slotting into a system that was already generating its own momentum. This atmosphere thrived in the years leading up to 2017, when Georgia secured its major accomplishment on its European integration path – visa-free travel with the EU. While arriving as a political decision, the visa-free regime was at the same time a product and showcase of invisible bureaucratic work that required years of alignment across justice, border management, and document security. Quiet Exodus Nobody left on the same day, and nobody announced they were leaving for the reasons they were actually leaving. People who have spent years inside an institution rarely say, on their way out, that the institution has broken their faith in itself. Instead, they choose to tell a cleaner story of a better opportunity elsewhere, which is sometimes even true, and which allows everyone involved to preserve the dignity of a parting. It does not require anyone to name what has actually happened. What actually happened was that the unspoken contract that had sustained the European decade of Georgian public administration quietly waned in the months that followed the Georgian ruling party’s November 2024 announcement on halting EU integration, just like relationships between people sometimes end through a gradual accumulation of silences. It is true that cracks were there before. The civil service in Georgia had never been independent from politics in the way that Western administrations at least formally aspire to be. Anyone who worked inside knew this and made their accommodations with it: the European direction felt serious enough to create genuine professional space even within that politically organized system. The system sustained a generation of people who felt that their expertise mattered, that the quality of their work would eventually reach someone with authority and inclination to act on it, and that the reform agenda they were serving was larger than any single political cycle and would outlive it. Once that sense disappeared, the same people found themselves with skills that had become contextually orphaned. They left, some quietly, some with disappointment, and some with silent resentment for spending years serving an institution that no longer knew what to do with them. Legacy of Convenience Not all of that work has vanished with Georgia’s anti-Western turn. Regulations and directives that a generation of Georgian civil servants spent years aligning with European standards are still here, but their fate since has depended on political and economic convenience. The technical regulations derived from AA are largely in place because the businesses have found ways to accommodate them, and the political class has found no particular reason to object. The food safety frameworks that took years to harmonize with the EU requirements continue to function at a level that keeps Georgian exports moving. But not all of that European reform legacy turned out to be politically comfortable. Such was, for example, civil service reform, one of the more substantial moves of the EU-alignment years. It was designed to shield the civil service from political interference, establish merit-based hiring and promotion, and provide institutional safeguards that would allow public officials to perform their duties without having to calculate whether the outcome would be acceptable to those in power. It took the Georgian ruling party only weeks to dismantle that achievement after groups of Georgian civil servants began signing protest petitions in response to the Georgian Dream’s anti-EU turn. The party responded by amending the law with speed and surgical precision to send a clear signal to civil servants that speaking their minds could now carry consequences. Overnight, the amendments left the public service without the vital safeguards it had enjoyed, a move that was followed by repeated reports of politically motivated purges in state institutions. What Remains Today, what remains inside the system is a machinery of public service without its moral center, resembling a railway administration that keeps publishing a flawless timetable after the headquarters has quietly decided the trains should no longer follow that route. The donors and development partners who provided much of the technical energy and external accountability now operate in a narrowed space that fits comfortably within the boundaries of what the political system has decided it can tolerate. This often means capacity building in areas that cost nothing and threaten no one, producing a training here, a workshop there. The picture is even bleaker at the local level, as the public service is increasingly staffed by people whose primary qualification is that they do not present a problem to those who appointed them. The central institutions hold, more or less, on the inertia of what was built before. The inertia, however, is not momentum, and a system that has stopped improving is the one that has started, quietly and without announcement, to go the other way.