DEAR READER,

Last week’s chatter in the region was all about the 2025 EU Enlargement Package. What stood out most was the report’s blunt assessment of Georgia: the country has “further derailed from the EU path” and now resembles a candidate “in name only.” To unpack what this really means for the pro-European Georgian society (and why Brussels can’t afford to look away either) we asked George Melashvili, political scientist, lecturer, and president of the Europe-Georgia Institute, to give us a deep dive on the topic. George also runs Isari24, an English-language newsletter for anyone following Georgia’s political landscape. Highly recommended if you want to stay in the loop! Sign up here.

Enjoy reading this week’s “brief”!

— Giorgi Beroshvili, Editor

Georgia today occupies an increasingly complex and fragile position in Europe’s political landscape. This position is shaped not only by the government’s departure from democratic norms, but also by the determination and resilience of a society fiercely fighting to save its European future. The recent EU Enlargement Report delivered the clearest institutional assessment yet of the country’s trajectory, stating that Georgia has “further derailed from the EU path” and currently resembles a candidate country “in name only.” This development demonstrates a shift in Brussels’ expectations of Tbilisi. It clearly reflects a growing recognition in high European corridors that the government is becoming more and more detached from the will of Georgian people. The fact they are now acting in fundamentally different directions is also becoming obvious: the captured state may be drifting indeed, but not the nation.

The Georgian Dream regime has, throughout the years, built a very peculiar political environment that deliberately occupies a grey zone between formal democracy and authoritarian consolidation. It preserves the façade of institutional legalistic process while steadily weakening the substance behind it. Formalities and legislative procedures are maintained, but genuine accountability is eliminated and replaced by one-party and one-man rule. Same is true for European aspirations — the rhetoric and toasts are retained, but practical alignment is abandoned, and immense resources are spent to transform Georgia’s dominantly pro-European society into an anti-European one. The result is a system that is authoritarian in design, but ambiguous in form — specifically designed to confuse observers, disorient the public, and limit both external leverage and internal pressure.

A central instrument of this strategy is gaslighting and narrative manipulation. Georgian Dream increasingly relies on sophisticated propaganda and political gaslighting, insisting that critical European assessments are the product of misunderstanding, or malice of the “Global War Party”, the “Deep State”, or “non-European forces within the EU”. The government portrays itself as defending sovereignty and “true European values” against “external meddling”, while framing genuine domestic dissent as orchestrated foreign-made destabilisation. This framing is amplified by drastic media imbalance in favour of the Georgian Dream, reproducing patterns familiar to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. It constructs a parallel political reality in which facts are endlessly disputed and distorted, accountability is recast as disloyalty, and public trust is systematically corroded. In this artificially manufactured reality, the party and the state are deliberately conflated, and any expression of dissent is treated not as democratic engagement but as treason of the state itself.

Recent developments indicate that this information strategy extends beyond Georgia’s borders. Actors associated with Orbán’s Fidesz and Germany’s AfD appear to have misused procedural avenues in both EU structures and European capitals receiving internal documents, later leaking them to the Georgian Dream. Once received, these documents are selectively misinterpreted and circulated by Georgian Dream as supposed proof of European hostility or institutional bias — an increasingly familiar feedback loop designed to undermine public confidence in the EU itself. These tactics form part of a wider pattern, and recent revelations about Hungarian intelligence attempts to infiltrate the European Commission further underline these concerns. Such tactics also seek to weaponise European institutions and procedures against European aspirations.

This shifts the focus to another challenge: the emergence of “Georgia fatigue” within parts of the EU. After years of political turbulence, some officials and observers have grown weary with Tbilisi’s repeated deviations from European commitments. Yet this fatigue risks conflating the behaviour of authoritarian government with societal will. Georgia is not a country turning away from Europe, but a country whose government is doing so in defiance of its people. Georgia is not a lost cause, but a frontline of Europe — a deeply contested space where the public remains committed to the European project even as the government moves in the opposite direction. Recognising this distinction is essential for Brussels to preserve both its credibility and its moral authority.

And yet, the most striking feature of Georgia’s current crisis is not state repression but societal resilience. For over a year, citizens have maintained peaceful protest — often in the face of intimidation, arrests, provocations, and orchestrated disinformation. Students, academics, journalists, and professionals of all sorts keep gathering on Rustaveli Avenue, demonstrating not only political opposition but democratic discipline. Their persistence has already reshaped international narratives: European partners increasingly speak not of “Georgia” but of “Georgia’s government”, recognising the stark difference between the two.

And as long as this determination endures, Georgia’s European future remains not a relic of past ambition, but a realistic outcome — one defended daily in the streets and increasingly recognised across Europe. Yet, this recognition, however appealing, alone is insufficient. Saving Georgia’s European future now requires more decisive engagement from Brussels: consistent political signalling that differentiates society from its government, robust support for independent media and civil society, and the readiness to deploy targeted measures against those undermining democratic norms. Only through such actions can the EU reinforce the aspirations of the Georgian people and ensure that their struggle is neither isolated nor in vain.

— George Melashvili, President of Europe-Georgia Foundation