As a critical decision on Georgia’s EU bid looms, the country’s first European ally traveled to Tbilisi to show last-minute support.
What is not clear is whether the support of this ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, will help strengthen Georgia’s chances of joining the EU or sabotage them.
The Hungarian leader’s two-day visit to Georgia on October 11-12 is the latest step in the rapidly developing partnership between the two countries, and in particular between Orban and his Georgian counterpart, Prime Minister Irakli Garibachvili.
The two men bonded as Garibashvili and the ruling Georgian Dream party took a sharp turn toward social conservatism in recent years, promoting an identity for Georgia that Orban had already championed for Hungary: a Europeanness which does not highlight liberalism and democracy but Christianity and “traditions”. values.”
Georgia and Hungary are “united by their attachment to traditional and eternal values, which have played a decisive role in preserving our history, culture (and) identity,” Garibachvili said in a joint appearance with Orban during this visit.
At a state dinner, Orban expanded on this theme, saying it was “miraculous” that Georgia and Hungary had both retained their unique identities for centuries in an often hostile environment. This miracle, he said, “provides… a political basis for relations between the two countries.”
Partnership Agreement
Political relations are indeed booming: the two countries signed a strategic partnership agreement last year, and this spring Garibashvili was one of the keynote speakers at the Budapest edition of the Political Action Conference Conservative Party (CPAC), a decades-old right-wing gathering. -American wings that Orban recently internationalized.
At the same time, Garibashvili and Georgian Dream followed Hungary’s political example. As Orban did in Hungary, Georgian leaders have sought to strengthen the ruling party’s control over nominally independent bodies like the judiciary and state cultural institutions. Georgian Dream also followed Orban’s lead in taking a skeptical stance toward kyiv over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
A notorious “foreign agents” law, which the government failed to pass this spring, was based less on the Russian model to which it was most often compared than on a similar Hungarian law, Western diplomats said in Tbilisi, speaking in the background.
All of this corresponds to what Carnegie Europe researcher Thomas de Waal recently called “the orbanization of Georgia.” With their increasingly illiberal domestic approach and transactional foreign policy with Western partners, Georgia and Hungary are taking a similar path to Azerbaijan and Turkey, de Waal said.
“Orban and (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan, both recent election winners, also show the Georgian Dream an effective strategy for defeating an opposition alliance,” de Waal wrote. “The main weapon is polarization. You tell voters that you are the bastion of stability and decency, mortally threatened by an opposition linked to degenerate globalist forces.”
Hungary, however, is already part of the EU and can challenge EU principles from within. Georgia is doing the same, while trying to persuade the rest of the bloc’s members to admit it. Western diplomats in Tbilisi privately say the EU has already had enough problems with Hungary in the bloc – Budapest has repeatedly used its veto to thwart initiatives supported by the rest of the bloc – and are therefore reluctant to admit another potentially difficult member.
Misunderstanding
Georgia applied for EU candidate status shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, alongside Ukraine and Moldova. While the latter two countries were granted candidate status in June 2022, Georgia was offered a European “perspective” and a list of reforms it should implement. These include reducing political polarization and strengthening the independence of the judiciary – areas where critics have pointed the finger at Hungary for similarly backsliding.
Orban has repeatedly criticized the EU’s decision to advance Georgia’s candidacy less quickly than those of Ukraine and Moldova. “What happened is very unfair to your country and must be corrected as quickly as possible,” he said in Tbilisi.
Many members of Georgia’s political opposition and anti-government civil society groups say the government’s efforts to meet EU demands since the decision leave much to be desired. They point to the government’s uneven implementation of reforms, as well as its foreign policy measures – such as mixed signals on the Russia-Ukraine war and the foreign agents bill – which they say , have called into question the country’s once unwavering commitment to a Euro-Atlantic orientation.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, is expected to report on Georgia’s progress by the end of October in its annual enlargement report, which will also assess the applications of Moldova and Ukraine to join the block. Then, in December, the EU’s 27 member states will vote on whether to advance Georgia’s candidacy.
There are indications that Orban is seeking to exercise his veto power in favor of Georgia. Citing sources in Brussels, RFE/RL Europe editor Rikard Jozwiak said reported that it is possible that Hungary “is pushing for Tbilisi’s candidate status as a quid pro quo for agreeing to give Ukraine the green light to begin EU accession negotiations.” Budapest has used its veto extensively in recent months on various political issues, often related to Ukraine – – so don’t rule out that this could happen again.”
This RFE/RL report was widely discussed in Tbilisi political circles and sparked mixed reactions among pro-European Georgians.
“This strategy to blackmail the EU through Hungary will backfire at some point,” said Kornely Kakachia, director of the Tbilisi-based think tank Georgian Institute of Politics. “It will move Georgia away from the European core, from Western Europe, and that is not in Georgia’s best interest,” he told RFE/RL.
Orban’s interest in Georgia’s European aspirations appears to be linked to his desire to strengthen illiberal forces within the bloc, analyst Volodymyr Posviatenko wrote in a statement. recent blog post for the Rondeli Foundation, a think tank based in Tbilisi. Similar motivations informed Orban’s advocacy of EU expansion in the Balkans, he argued.
The Hungarian leader hopes to “use Georgia as a bargaining chip to blackmail the EU and increase Hungary’s influence on the decision-making process,” Posviatenko wrote. “Moreover, promoting the accelerated accession process of illiberal Georgia correlates with Orban’s goal of creating a group of illiberal states within the EU.”
Orban hinted at this strategy in his comments in Tbilisi: “Protecting Christian traditions is a prerequisite for Europe’s competitiveness, and we would be happy if countries anchored in this heritage decide to move closer to the EU he said during an appearance with Garibachvili.
Although the two current leaders have recently established strong personal relationships, Orban’s interest in Georgia actually dates back to the previous regime of President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is now enemy number 1 of the Georgian Dream.
Four days before the 2012 parliamentary elections, Orban appeared with Saakashvili at a campaign rally in support of the then-ruling United National Movement, the party founded by the former Georgian president. The head of Tbilisi’s Kakachia think tank noted that this was happening at a time when Saakashvili had become more authoritarian and the Georgian Dream coalition that ultimately won these elections was seen as a democratizing force.
When Georgian Dream took power, some senior members of the Saakashvili administration went into exile in Hungary, including former Justice Minister Zurab Adeishvili and Erekle Kodua, a former senior security official. This fact was not lost on some during Orban’s last visit.
“I appeal to the Prime Minister (Garibashvili) and ask him: did he speak with his friend Orban about the extradition to Georgia of former members of the United National Movement regime, former officials, criminals, of odious personalities like Adeishvili and Kodua?” asked Anna Buchkuri, an MP from the For Georgia party, which is aligned with neither the current nor the former ruling parties. “You know that Orban’s government offered them asylum.”
The economy has also brought Georgia and Hungary closer together. The two are linked in an ambitious project that would build a power cable under the Black Sea to transmit electricity from Azerbaijan through Georgia and Romania to Hungary. The EU approved the project as a way to wean Europe off Russian energy; European Council President Ursula von der Leyen said at a signing ceremony that the deal would “bring the European Union closer to our partners in the South Caucasus region.”
If, according to Kakachia, this amounts to strengthening an “authoritarian axis”, the involvement of the EU “legitimizes this axis”.
“Everyone benefits,” he said.