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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Davit Zedelashvili

Davit Zedelashvili is a Fellow at the University of Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia, affiliated with the Research Institute "Gnomon Wise".
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POSTS BY Davit Zedelashvili

01 March 2023

Davit Zedelashvili

Georgia’s Bill on Foreign Agents and the Limits of the EU’s Soft Power

On February 20, 2023, the Parliament of Georgia registered the bill "On the transparency of foreign influence" that introduces the category of an "agent of foreign influence" – any private legal entity which gets more than 20% of its entire budget from a "foreign force". These facially innocent "monitoring" functions harbour a potentially totalitarian instrument of control. In Georgia, which underwent Stalinist purges of the 1930s, where family members (anonymously) denounced each other to the NKVD (secret police) and innocent people were rounded and summarily executed on charges of being a "foreign agent", this rings a much louder alarm bell, than elsewhere. Continue reading >>

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05 March 2021

Davit Zedelashvili

The Rule of Law in Georgia

On March 1, Charles Michel, President of the European Council, visited Tbilisi to witness Georgia’s rapid descent into authoritarian rule, after an opposition politician was detained under questionable circumstances. The EU institutions’ experience of handling rule of law crises at home should inform its neighbourhood policy. Somewhat paradoxically, in this respect, the EU has greater leverage in its neighbourhood countries, like Georgia, than it has towards its internal problem states. Continue reading >>

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