EU sanctions on Georgian judiciary could undermine ‘regime’ stability, analyst

Targeted sanctions on Georgia’s judiciary and middle-level officials could pose a serious challenge to the country’s ruling elite, a leading political analyst has suggested, as the European Union reportedly considers expanding its sanctions regime.

Giorgi Rukhadze, co-founder of the Georgian  Strategic Analysis Centre, said that while some EU member states such as Hungary or Slovakia may resist sanctions on billionaire and ruling party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, they could be more amenable to penalising judges and other figures perceived as enablers of political repression.

“If sanctions are imposed on the middle class en masse, the government will have to release a large number of people from the middle class,” Rukhadze said. “This will undermine the stability of the regime and its vertical.”

He argued that sanctioning only top officials had so far proven insufficient, and called for broader targeting of “those perpetrators through whom the regime is trying to carry out repression.”