Georgian PM hosts EU diplomats amid turmoil over now shelved foreign agents bill

Georgian prime minister Irakli Garibashvili on Sunday hosted a formal dinner in honor of the EU delegation members currently visiting Georgia, the government press office said. 

It noted the head of Government and the European diplomats discussed Georgia’s European integration in an informal setting and added a high-level regional ambassadorial organized by the EU Delegation was about to be held in Tbilisi. 

The press office announced senior officials for the EU’s External Action Service and the European Commission—including the Heads of the EU Delegations to the countries of the Eastern Partnership and Central Asia, also to Turkey and Austria—would participate in the regional ambassadorial.

“The high-level regional ambassadorial of the EU is held periodically and represents an important forum for discussing the EU’s policy toward concrete countries.As it was noted at the official dinner, holding the ambassadorial in Georgia demonstrates Georgia’s importance in the region for the EU, including as a strong ally in cementing the cooperation among European and Central Asian”, said the government administration. 

The meeting came following the last-week’s large-scale rallies in Tbilisi against the controversial foreign agents bill that envisaged the registration of domestic NGOs and media organizations as foreign agents if they received more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad. 

The bill was recalled by the ruling party on Thursday and rejected by the parliament the next day, amid protests and the condemnation of the initiative as a “Russian law” by the international community and domestic players. 

In his comments last week the PM accused the “radical wing” of the domestic opposition and the country’s foreign partners of inciting the protests.