The ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party has unveiled plans for new bills aimed at censoring domestic media and limiting foreign influence in Georgian civil society organisations.

The contested parliament, which contains only MPs from GD and its splinter group, People’s Power, following a boycott by the Georgian opposition, opened for its spring session on February 4, and appears to be pushing to ram through increasingly repressive policies as quickly as possible.

Mamuka Mdinaradze, the leader of the GD parliamentary majority, introduced the laws within a new package of legislation on February 5, and stated that they would be adopted within the next two or three months following consultations, according to local platform Civil.ge.

According to the party, these laws will be modelled on similar legislation in the US and UK.

Mdinaradze announced that “starting tomorrow” [February 6], the party would begin work on new media legislation that would “set standards for media objectivity and journalistic ethics” and “establish institutional mechanisms for monitoring and upholding these standards”.

In other words, such a bill would bring independent media platforms in Georgia in line with standards predetermined by law and would employ a system to ensure adherence to these requirements.

“Funding of the media from foreign sources will be limited,” the GD MP stated, yet added that restrictions would not apply to “revenue from commercial advertising and similar sources”.

According to Mdinaradze, the new law aims to “protect our citizens from misinformation and provide maximum safeguards against foreign interference”.

The media bill will be “in line with the British model and legislation” but will be tailored to the Georgian media market, said the GD MP, who did not share any further details of the law.

Mdinaradze also announced the parliament’s adoption of an “exact copy” of the US’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to update Georgia’s existing Law on the Transparency of Foreign Influence – described by the MP as a simplified version of FARA – which was passed in the spring of 2024 despite huge domestic backlash.

Under last year’s “foreign agent law”, also called the “Russian law” due to its close resemblance to legislation passed under Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013, Georgian NGOs and media organisations that receive over 20% of their funding from abroad must register themselves as “organisations acting in the interests of a foreign power” and are subject to stringent monitoring every six months, with refusal to comply resulting in heavy fines.

“Several dozen of Georgia’s wealthiest and largest NGO’s receiving foreign funding have not even registered in the registry,” Mdinaradze said on February 5. “Therefore, instead of a simplified version, we will adopt a new law that is a copy of the current US legislation and ensure its full implementation,” the MP declared, but again gave no further insight into how the law might look in practice.

FARA was first established in 1938 and required anyone acting at the director and control of a “foreign principle” or government to “make periodic public disclosure” of their relationship with said “principle”.

As the Georgian platform OC Media reports, the act aimed to target individuals and countries considered to be US enemies in the run up to WW2, namely the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

A report published in 2023 by the American law firm Covington and Burling describes FARA, in the pre-Trump years at least, as “a backwater of American law, with just seven prosecutions between 1966 and 2016”.

As OC Media reported, the Venice Commission’s report on the Georgia’s May 2024 “foreign agent” bill “also dismissed comparisons between FARA and the controversial Georgian law”.

“Under the FARA, one does not have to register simply because one receives funds from a foreign source … The FARA was not enacted to regulate specifically civil society organisations or media representatives,” the Commission’s report stated, contradicting GD’s claim that its new and updated foreign influence bill is a direct copy of the US’s equivalent.

As part of the new package of law, Mdinaradze also announced that legal norms “providing for mandatory participation of NGOs in the legislative decision-making process” would be revoked, essentially making it even easier for GD to govern without interference or objection.

The GD MP also declared that, moving forward, the head of a given public institution must give their consent before civil servants are permitted to “receive any benefits from foreign sources, whether direct or indirect, salary supplements, finance of training, visits, etc.”

Additionally, Mdinaradze announced that a governmental fund would be set up for “financing civic initiatives and organisations” but underscored that only those “that are ready to ensure the pursuit of the influence of not foreign, but Georgian people in Georgia will have the opportunity to receive grants”.

Lastly, the GD MP stated that appointments and dismissals of the heads of legal entities under public institutions would be simplified and at the discretion of the public institution head, a decision which is bound to trigger further allegations from public servants that retaining a job in the sector has become intertwined with politics.

As the premise behind the new legislation, Mdinaradze echoed GD’s previous allegations that the West is “conspiring to interfere in Georgia’s internal affairs and exert pressure on the country”.

“The greater the pressure, blackmail and attempts to violate the independence of Georgia, to create unrest and chaos in our country, the greater the reaction will be, including the legal and political reaction prevent it,” Mdinaradze concluded.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze described the new laws as part of the efforts to “take back our country” and “eliminate loopholes” in Georgian legislation as much as possible for the sake of “effective governance”, reported Jamnews. 

The laws targeting media and NGOs are the latest in a string of repressive policies GD has rolled out in recent days, as pro-EU, anti-government protesters continue to demonstrate nightly, calling for a rerun of the October 2024 parliamentary elections and the release of all those arrested at street protests.

Earlier on February 5, the one-party parliament voted to strip 49 opposition MPs from three coalitions of their mandates, approving the politicians’ appeal to have their seats revoked following the contested October vote, which GD is widely accused of rigging, and the opposition have declared they do not recognise.

Following clashes between police and demonstrators and multiple violent arrests at a pro-EU protest on a Tbilisi highway, on February 3 GD announced new legislative amendments to Georgia’s criminal and administrative codes and the Law on Gatherings and Demonstrations, essentially toughening punishments for petty crimes such as disobeying and insulting police officers and block court entrances, with the aim to stifle the ongoing civil resistance movement sweeping the Caucasus country.

On February 4 the Georgian ombudsman, Levan Ioseliani, stated that the new amendments “create threats of disproportionate restriction” to the fundamental rights of assembly, expression and fair trial, and warned against “expedited consideration” of the new amendments, arguing instead for “appropriate analysis and thorough discussion” before any changes were adopted.

Along with the laws aimed at civil society and the media, the ruling party on February 5 also announced tougher policies on drugs, juvenile justice and migration.

“If we look at the measures, the laws, and the decisions that have been made after the elections, they are nothing but repressive,” Georgia’s former president and outspoken GD critic, Salome Zourabichvili, stated at a press briefing on February 5.

“The Georgian protest is not going away, and we will fight until we recover our rights and future through new elections,” Zourabichvili wrote on X the same day.