![]() ![]() ![]() Six elected opposition parliamentarians have now dropped the boycott and entered parliament, but the vast majority are standing by their refusal. In its turn, the ruling party has condemned the boycott as a deliberate attempt by the opposition to destabilise the country. Since then, the opposition has been lambasting the “one-party parliament”. Accordingly, on 11 December 2020 only the elected representatives of Georgian Dream took up their parliamentary activities. Since the opposition views the results as fraudulent, its representatives have refused to accept their mandates as a protest. While international election observation missions assessed the elections as competitive and concluded that fundamental freedoms had been preserved overall, local watchdog organisations noted substantial deficits and irregularities. Since all opposition parties boycotted the second round, however, Georgian Dream ran on its own. Voting occurred over two rounds: the first by proportional representation, the second by majority voting. The United National Movement took second place, with 36 seats. Georgian Dream officially won the elections, with a total of 90 of the 150 seats. If not its origin, then at least a substantial catalyst of the current stalemate between government and opposition were the Georgian parliamentary elections of autumn 2020. ![]() Two aspects in particular need to be taken into account when evaluating the current relationship: domestic politics and its interaction with foreign policy, and the embeddedness of the relationship in the regional context, which is currently being reconfigured. This reveals a number of conclusions about the current state of EU-Georgia relations, and especially the challenges they face. The Georgian government’s public announcement of its intention to apply for EU membership comes at a time when the political crisis in the country has further rigidified. This is primarily evidenced by the fact that a large majority of the elected opposition candidates are boycotting parliament. Since the parliamentary elections of 31 October 2020 – which the opposition has decried as fraudulent – the controversy has blown up into a national political crisis. Georgian politics was burdened for more than 18 months by the mutual animosity between the governing party, Georgian Dream, and the political opposition, in particular the former ruling party United National Movement (UNM). The developments of recent weeks and months, however, have raised grave doubts within the EU. In October 2020, the deputy chairman of the Georgian parliament, Kakha Kuchava, had already confidently stated that Georgia would be ready for this step in 2024. On 6 January 2021 Georgia’s then-Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia announced that the country would be applying to join the European Union in 2024. Both the new regional context and the Georgian domestic political crisis should be an inducement for the EU to engage more with its eastern neighbourhood, and especially to give new impetus to its relations with Euro-Atlantic orientated Georgia. Tbilisi continues to have high expectations of the EU, which claims to be a geopolitical actor. For Georgia, which is the only country in the South Caucasus to have clear EU and NATO ambitions, this change is a potential threat to its pro-Western course. While Russia and Turkey have positioned themselves as influential actors in the region, the EU has been barely visible. The war over Nagorno-Karabakh has also changed the regional constellation. The country is not only facing domestic political challenges. This is evidenced above all by the fact that the majority of elected opposition parties have boycotted entering parliament. Since the parliamentary elections in October 2020, Georgia’s government and opposition have found themselves in a political deadlock. ![]()
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