Georgia’s parliament on Tuesday, April 1st, passed a direct copy of a U.S. law on “foreign agents,” AFP reports.
The new bill replaces one adopted last year that forced NGOs and media to register as “organisations pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they received at least a fifth of their funding from abroad.
The previous foreign influence law sparked daily demonstrations and Western condemnation, with critics accusing the government of using Russian-inspired tactics to target its opponents, even though the bill was based on other similar Western laws.
Georgian Dream party lawmakers passed the new bill, a word-for-word copy of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), with 86 votes.
FARA requires lobbyists and lawyers to declare if they are working on behalf of foreign interests.
“With the adoption of this law, any misleading allegations that Georgian laws do not meet international standards will come to an end,” said parliament speaker Shalva Papuashvili.
The Western ruling liberal elites and Brussels have attacked the Georgian government for espousing a sovereignist foreign policy and a conservative stance on social issues such as safeguarding traditional family values by outlawing same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, and the promotion of LGBT ideology in schools.
Georgian Dream, which has been in power for the past twelve years, won the parliamentary elections at the end of October, prompting Brussels to call the vote illegitimate, even though international observers did not find any substantial evidence for the accusation.
