BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - The European Union has warned that the Georgian Parliament's decision to ignore the objections of President Salome Zourabichvili to the controversial 'Foreign Agents' law will negatively impact Georgia's path to EU membership.
The Georgian Parliament voted on Tuesday to override the President's veto of the law on transparency of foreign influence.
The chairperson of the parliament is expected to sign the bill into law in the coming days as presidential powers are mostly nominal in Georgia, reports say.
The European Commission said that the EU has stressed repeatedly that the law adopted by the Georgian Parliament goes against EU core principles and values. 'Its enactment leads to a backsliding on at least three out of the nine steps (on disinformation; on polarization; on fundamental rights and involvement of Civil Society Organizations) set out in the Commission's recommendation for candidate status endorsed by EU leaders,' it said in a statement.
The Commission reminded the former Soviet Republic that beyond the law on transparency of foreign influence, there has been so far insufficient political attention mobilized to progress substantially on the nine steps.
The Commission urged the Georgian authorities to reverse this trend and to return firmly on the EU path.
It gave a warning to Georgia that the EU and its Member States are considering 'all options to react to these developments'.
The Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence, more commonly known as the 'foreign agents bill' requires media and nongovernmental organizations and other nonprofits to register as 'pursuing the interests of a foreign power' if they receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad. Georgia's opposition has denounced the legislation as an effort to crackdown on independent media, civil society, human rights activists and government critics.
Georgia's security forces and riot police violently cracked down people's protests against the law.
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