Rikard Jozwiak, the Europe editor for RFE/Radio Liberty, responds to the recent developments in Georgia.

"Three months after controversial Georgian parliamentary elections took place on October 26, the EU - and to a lesser degree NATO - are still unsure of how to proceed in their relations with Tbilisi.

The issue has become even more complicated as the ruling Georgian Dream party in December 2024 elected and inaugurated Mikheil Kavelashvili as the president of the country. It was the first indirect election of the largely ceremonial head of state in the South Caucasus republic after constitutional changes in 2017 did away with a direct public vote.

Kavelashvili’s presidency is disputed by the country’s opposition; by Salome Zurabishvili, who still claims the presidency as her own until, she says, a legitimate replacement has been elected; and by some parts of the international community. The European Parliament, in late November 2024, overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for fresh Georgian elections and rejected the parliament that subsequently elected Kavelashvili.

Deep Background: For the Council of the EU, the most powerful part of the bloc where the 27 EU member states sit, the situation is less clear cut. Operating by consensus on foreign policy matters, the room is divided by countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, which rushed to congratulate Georgian Dream directly in late October 2024, and hawks such as Estonia and Lithuania.

Speaking to several EU officials on background, it appears as if they would prefer to just kick the can down the road on Kavelashvili and not have to deal with Georgia at all at the moment. As one senior official put it: “There is no “EU deal” on this - in fact, we have classic EU limbo. Nobody wants to say anything, nobody wants to touch it, and nobody definitely wants to put anything on paper".

A second diplomat I spoke to was even blunter, saying that "we are not taking steps on this right now but, at some point, we will have to face questions on this".

A third source from a country critical of the current regime in Tbilisi was rather gloomy about predicting the future: “It’s impossible to have unanimity on nonrecognition policy [of the] Georgian authorities. We will try to keep the line [on] limiting contact with the president and new government as much as possible. But I am afraid with time it will not be possible".

Many EU officials note that the bloc currently only engages with Georgia on a technical level in order to "depoliticize" the situation, but no one knows how long this will go on.

Drilling Down

There are two other reasons why the EU’is unable to move forward. One is the reading of what happened during the controversial parliamentary elections last year. The full OSCE/ODHIR report on the vote, which was released in December 2024, hasn’t settled the issue. "We cannot state that the election results were illegal or illegitimate. We still talk about irregularities. We haven"t moved beyond that point”, one EU official told me on background.
The second issue is that the EU has a lot going on. When EU foreign ministers met in Brussels for their first council of the year on January 27, they discussed Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East, and then how to deal with the new U.S. administration. Georgia was relegated to the end of the meeting under “Current Affairs”. Little was decided when Georgia was discussed by ministers in December 2024.
Sanctions on leading Georgian Dream officials - similar to those imposed by the US - were shot down and all that was green-lighted was a mostly symbolic measure of new visa requirements for Georgian diplomatic passport holders

At NATO things are a bit simpler. One official, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to speak on the record, told me that “the short answer is yes, we see [Kavelashvili] as the Georgian president. The long answer is that it is a difficult situation. Officially. we are not saying much, but if we must invite him to an event like a summit, we would. It is, however, worth pointing out that we don’t foresee that Georgian ministers will be invited to NATO ministerials this year, nor any Georgian leaders to the NATO summit in The Hague in June."

What is also under way in the military alliance is that some joint programs with Georgia might be suspended, notably cooperation with the countrys Defense Ministry. This could come after a review, in which all NATO-Georgia cooperation will be scrutinized. The review should be presented to the 32 NATO member states in the coming weeks", - writes the author.