Georgians protest as prime minister suspends EU accession talks

Protests erupted in Georgia on Thursday after the prime minister said he was suspending talks on his country joining the European Union for four years, accusing Brussels of “blackmail and manipulation”.

Thousands of protesters gathered outside the parliament in Tbilisi and there were demonstrations in other cities after Irakli Kobakhidze, of the Georgian Dream party, said the country would not pursue EU accession until 2028.

Kobakhidze made the statement hours after he was reappointed prime minister after last month’s parliamentary election, which Georgian Dream won but which the opposition said had been rigged under the influence of Russia.

Police clashed with protesters in Tbilisi in the early hours of Friday, local time. Officers ordered protesters to disperse, fired water cannon and used pepper spray and tear gas as masked people tried to smash their way into the parliament. Some protesters tossed fireworks at police, shouting “Russians” and “Slaves”. The interior ministry said that three police officers had been injured.

Earlier on Thursday, the European parliament had adopted a non-binding resolution rejecting the results of Georgia’s October 26 parliamentary elections, alleging “significant irregularities” in the vote.

The resolution called for new elections within a year under international supervision, and for sanctions against top Georgian officials, including Kobakhidze. European election observers said that the vote had been held in a divisive atmosphere marked by bribery, double voting and physical violence.

Accusing the European parliament and “some European politicians” of blackmail, Kobakhidze said: “We have decided not to bring up the issue of joining the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028.”

However, he pledged to continue implementing reforms, asserting that “by 2028, Georgia will be more prepared than any other candidate country to open accession talks with Brussels and become a member state in 2030”.

The goal of EU membership is enshrined in Georgia’s constitution and supported by 80 per cent of the population. The former Soviet country officially won EU candidate status in December 2023, but Brussels has frozen the accession process until Tbilisi takes concrete steps to address what the EU calls democratic backsliding.

Opposition lawmakers are boycotting the new parliament, alleging fraud in the October elections, in which the ruling Georgian Dream party gained a new majority.

Salome Zourabichvili, the pro-western president, who is at loggerheads with Georgian Dream, has declared the election unconstitutional and is seeking to annul the results through the constitutional court.

She was among those protesting in Tbilisi after Kobakhidze’s statement. Waving EU and Georgian flags, thousands rallied outside parliament, blocking traffic on the capital’s main road.

Shota Sabashvili, 20, said: “Georgian Dream didn’t win the elections, it staged a coup. There is no legitimate parliament or government in Georgia. We will not let this self-proclaimed prime minister destroy our European future.”

In the western city of Kutaisi, police detained several demonstrators, the independent Pirveli TV station reported.

Zourabichvili also held an “emergency meeting” with foreign diplomats, her office said. “Today marks a significant point, or rather, the conclusion of the constitutional coup that has been unfolding for several weeks,” she told a news conference alongside opposition leaders.

“Today, this non-existent and illegitimate government declared war on its own people,” she added, calling herself the country’s “sole legitimate representative”.

Georgian Dream, which has been accused of moving Tbilisi away from Europe and closer to Moscow, denies electoral fraud. Its nomination of Kobakhidze, 46, for prime minister in February raised eyebrows in the West because of his claims that European countries and the United States were trying to drag Georgia into the Russia-Ukraine war.

On Thursday, Georgian Dream MPs voted unanimously for Kobakhidze, who is a lawyer and university professor, to continue as prime minister. He served as parliamentary speaker between 2016 and 2019 and as vice-president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe rights watchdog from 2020 to 2022.

He is seen as a loyal ally of the powerful oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgian Dream’s honorary chairman and Georgia’s richest man, who is widely believed to pull the strings of power. But constitutional law experts have said that any decisions made by the new parliament are invalid because it approved its own credentials, in violation of a legal requirement to await a court ruling on Zourabichvili’s effort to annul the election results.