The election results in Georgia last weekend saw the ruling Georgian Dream party re-elected, with important implications for the country, region and beyond. This blog sets out those implications, with expert insight from three authors.
First is Natia Seskuria on the significance for Georgia. She is an associate professor at the Business and Technology University in Tbilisi; she is also the founder of the Regional Institute for Security Studies and a research associate at the United Kingdom’s Royal United Services Institute. Antonia Battaglia, senior advisor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), comes next with a section on the implications for Europe – and she’s followed by TBI’s senior policy advisor on Europe and global trends, Daniel Sleat, who looks at the wider geopolitics surrounding the outcome.
Implications for Georgia
Many Georgians have framed the parliamentary elections held last Saturday as existential – and decisive for the country’s future. Their importance was reflected in a high country-wide turnout of 58.94 per cent, which equates to more than 2 million voters. Yet, as expected, election night took a dramatic turn when both the ruling Georgian Dream party and the opposition started celebrating victory based on conflicting results shown by the exit polls. Following confirmation of a Georgian Dream victory with 54 per cent, the opposition – backed by the president of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili – began contesting the results and calling on citizens to protest major electoral fraud to save the country’s European future. Despite uncertainty about how things may evolve, it is clear that Georgia will end up, at least in the short term, in a political crisis.
The international community has already reacted to the result; for example, EU leaders, as well as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, requested an investigation into reports of election violation. This international response will have important domestic implications, in that more than 80 per cent of Georgians support the country’s deeper European integration. Democracy has already been backsliding – especially since the introduction of the controversial Russian-inspired “law on transparency of foreign influence”. If elections are proven to have been illegitimate, it would mean the end of Georgia’s EU integration process in the immediate future. Such a dramatic fallout with Western partners will also make the country even more vulnerable to the Russian threat.
While Zourabichvili claimed that the elections were a Russian operation and recognising them would mean legitimising Russian takeover, Moscow seems pleased with the results; Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of RT, was quick to react to the results by claiming that Georgians had won. Meanwhile, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused the Georgian president of orchestrating a coup and suggested that she should be prosecuted.
Moscow will want to push for the formalisation of Georgia’s fallout with the West by depriving the country of Western aid and ending its European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations. This would also be a significant loss for the West, since Georgia has been the most pro-Western ally in the region and remains strategically important. As both Russia and China are interested in increasing their footprint in Georgia, the West cannot afford to ignore developments.
For now, Georgia is facing a prolonged political and constitutional crisis. Despite serious allegations, reversing the result would be difficult unless the opposition, civil society and international observers managed to effectively prove fraud through an investigation conducted by an impartial body. Saving Georgian democracy and the country’s European aspirations would depend on the right of Georgian people to vote in free and fair elections being sufficiently protected; as it stands, there is a strong case to believe that it has been violated.
Implications for Europe
To most effectively frame the importance of the Georgian election results for the EU, it is important to initially take a step back and reflect on the main axes of EU-Georgia cooperation over the years, starting with the most recent statements from the European Council.
At the latest European Council meeting on 17 October, the EU called on Georgia to adopt democratic and sustainable reforms and urged the country to refrain from adopting legislation that would undermine the fundamental rights and freedoms of Georgian citizens.
The EU’s longstanding support for Georgia officially began in 1991, following the country’s declaration of independence, and was confirmed with the signature of an Association Agreement in 2014. The agreement, which included details on the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, served as the legal basis for deepening political ties, strengthening economic linkages, promoting common values and enhancing cooperation in areas of mutual interest.
Georgia applied for EU membership in March 2022, in the aftermath of Russian aggression towards Ukraine, and was granted candidate status in December 2023 on the understanding that the country would implement necessary reforms. This included taking the nine steps set out in a European Commission recommendation, required before the opening of accession negotiations.
But progress has stalled since this stage, and Georgia remains at candidate status. Unlike Moldova’s application, the formal process of negotiations has not yet opened for Georgia. In fact, at June’s European Council meeting, the decision was made to halt that process following the Georgian parliament’s adoption of the “law on transparency of foreign influence”, which the council viewed as democratic backsliding.
The EU has demonstrated its support for Georgia in the form of financial contributions to support the country’s internal reforms. Politically, assistance has also been consistent: one example is the Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, who operates in Brussels under the EU External Action Service.
For more than two decades, Georgia’s population has been strongly pro-EU and pro-NATO. Civil society in Georgia is politically savvy and actively engaged, with strongly held democratic values that have been demonstrated over the years through a persistent public attitude of resistance against Russian interference.
Failing to grant Georgia EU membership would mean contributing to huge political instability in the region, and in one of the EU’s candidate enlargement countries. It would also mean surrendering to the Russian threat in a place that has been brought even closer to the EU with the beginning of accession talks.
Georgian opposition parties and civil society need more significant support from the EU, otherwise pro-EU sentiment will be eroded and Georgia will remain in a very dangerous grey zone. Further support could include an international conference on the fragility of the situation in Eastern Europe or a renewed strategy with G7 partners. The wider coordination mechanism of the European Political Community might also play a key role.
Implications for the West
The first and second parts of this commentary have set out the implications of Georgia’s election result for the country itself and the EU; this final section takes a broader geopolitical view of where the result leaves the West.
Georgia has long sought closer ties with the West – seeking NATO membership in 2002, for example – and while the country’s formal EU-membership aspirations are more recent, the overall arc is clear. The cases of Moldova’s recent referendum and the Georgian election are different, but both sets of results should be a reality check for the West.
Yes, in both countries there are widespread allegations of interference and electoral irregularities, but the risk that Russia and its allies pose transcends this. Of course the West must do more to face up to the hybrid threat that Russia presents, but this also needs to be put it in its proper context: hybrid interference is a symptom of a growing geopolitical confrontation with Russia, not the cause.
A Russia that does not share many of the values that the West takes for granted is increasingly assertive geopolitically; this is true globally but also regionally. The threat is exacerbated by other states that Russia is allied with, such as Iran. This grouping is interchangeably called the “axis of instability”, the “axis of evil” and so on. These countries are not only increasingly assertive in their world views but also increasingly active – by direct and indirect means – in ensuring that middle countries support their position.
This leaves the West facing a threat that is growing in scale and scope. To respond properly, it must give deeper thought to its partnerships and alliances. This includes ensuring that countries aspiring to join its orbit are not faced with a door that is only partially ajar. Right now, in a binary “fully in” or “fully out” model of alliances, countries such as Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine are left hanging in between. This is of particular concern when the “fully in” option requires a country to undergo a lengthy process of change to gain membership. Such a trajectory leaves these countries vulnerable in the period between their expression of interest of aligning with the West and the full completion of that process by becoming part of a formal alliance.
If the West wants to better help those who want to ally, it needs to transcend this “in or out” offer. In Europe, conversations about a “multispeed” EU have recently gone quiet; for NATO, they have not properly begun. A move to different layers of membership might be complex in both cases, but we need to think in this direction.
To better protect countries such as Georgia, Moldova and – in light of what transpired in 2014 and 2022 – Ukraine, the West needs to help them better navigate their way into its alliances. An everything-or-nothing model requires a concrete “in the meantime” option: something that more definitively secures those countries within a Western orbit.
If the West continues to be a more complex and more equivocal partner than those it opposes geopolitically, it will leave more countries stuck in a halfway house – and open to exploitation.