The European Parliament held a debate on October 8th, entitled “The Democratic Regression and Threats to the Political Pluralism of Georgia“. MEPs discussed upcoming elections in Georgia and the anti-democratic actions by the ruling party, as well as anti-EU rhetoric. They also discussed the need to adopt an EU resolution to support Georgian democracy prior to the elections. This resolution is expected to be voted on on 9 October.
According to the European Commission’s financial allocations to partner countries, Georgia will lose 121.3 millions of euros in EU aid because of democratic backsliding. According to the European Commission’s announcement, these funds are being withheld from Georgia or reallocated “in response to backsliding on democracy standards, especially following the adoption of a Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence (Foreign Agents’ Law) targeting Georgian civil societies and media.”
Transparency International-Georgia, a local corruption monitor, and key observer of the election, has criticized the Interior Ministry for empowering U.S. sanctioned official Zviad Karzishvili (also known as “Khareba”) to oversee the formation of “territorial teams” tasked with detecting and preventing violation during the pre-election and election day.
The National Bank of Georgia (NBG), in an effort to support the national currency lari (GEL), sold USD 48,5 million on 8 October. According to NBG, recent demand for foreign currencies, largely due to scheduled dividend payments, have put additional pressures on the exchange rate of lari, and the bank chose to intervene in currency market. The NBG concluded that “the macroeconomic fundamentals are robust” and that the strong economic growth of the past three years, as well as the low inflation rates since 2023, have remained the norm.
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