By Moreta Bobokhidze, reading: 10 minutes.
Georgia entered 2025 in a state of profound political crisis, shaped by the disputed October 2024 parliamentary elections and the ruling Georgian Dream party’s consolidation of power. What unfolded over the year was not a series of isolated incidents but a systemic pattern of democratic erosion, institutional capture, and escalating confrontation between the state and society. International observers, European institutions, and democracy‑monitoring organizations increasingly described Georgia as a country moving away from its democratic commitments and drifting toward authoritarian governance. The events of 2025 marked the most dramatic democratic decline since independence, reshaping Georgia’s relationship with the European Union and altering the internal balance between state authority and civic resistance.
The year began with growing international alarm. In January, analysts and human rights observers noted that Georgia’s political trajectory was diverging sharply from Western democratic norms. Commentators highlighted the government’s adoption of policies such as the “foreign agent” law and the “LGBT propaganda” bill, which aligned Georgia more closely with authoritarian models in the region and signaled a deliberate distancing from European democratic standards. These developments intensified domestic polarization and set the tone for a year defined by confrontation between the ruling party and a mobilized civil society.
By March, the scale of democratic deterioration became quantifiable. The V‑Dem Institute, one of the world’s leading democracy research organizations, released its 2025 Democracy Report, which downgraded Georgia to an “electoral autocracy”, a classification reserved for states where elections occur but fail to meet democratic standards. The report concluded that Georgia had experienced the largest one‑year democratic decline since independence, with 2024 marking the most significant regression in three decades. This assessment placed Georgia below the threshold for democratic classification and confirmed what many domestic observers had been warning: the country’s institutions were no longer functioning as checks on executive power.
Throughout the spring and summer of 2025, protests continued across the country despite escalating repression. Civil society organizations documented physical assaults on protesters, administrative detentions, and new mechanisms of coercion, including forced drug testing and punitive fines for actions such as “artificially blocking the road.” A fact‑finding report covering June to July 2025 described a pattern of systemic repression, including excessive force by court bailiffs, targeted harassment of activists, and the use of administrative proceedings to silence dissent. These practices reflected a broader strategy of criminalizing protest and deterring civic participation through fear and exhaustion.
The political crisis deepened as the year progressed. The 2024–2025 political standoff remained unresolved, with the opposition continuing to reject the legitimacy of the parliament and the ruling party pursuing a strategy aimed at securing a constitutional majority. According to reporting on the crisis, Georgian Dream relied on alleged electoral fraud, police violence, and dismissals of civil servants to consolidate power, while the opposition maintained pressure through demonstrations, sit‑ins, student mobilization, and civil disobedience. The Constitutional Court’s dismissal of challenges to the electoral law further entrenched the ruling party’s position and signaled the judiciary’s alignment with executive interests.
By mid‑2025, the European Union’s institutions had become increasingly vocal. In July, the European Parliament issued a sharply worded resolution declaring that the rigged October 2024 elections marked a decisive turning point toward authoritarianism. The Parliament stated that Georgia was now a victim of state capture, refused to recognize the legitimacy of the one‑party parliament and president, and reiterated calls for new elections. This was one of the strongest institutional condemnations Georgia had received from the EU since becoming a candidate country in 2023, and it underscored the severity of the democratic crisis.
The deterioration of democratic governance also affected Georgia’s EU integration prospects. In December 2025, the European Commission warned that Georgia could face phased suspension of its visa‑free travel regime due to serious regression in governance, rule of law, and fundamental rights. The Commission’s report stated that Georgia had significantly backtracked on the commitments that formed the basis for visa liberalization and signaled that Brussels was prepared to take “appropriate measures” if the situation did not improve. The initial phase of suspension would target diplomatic and official passport holders those deemed “primarily responsible” for the democratic decline before potentially expanding to the general population. This warning represented a major diplomatic setback and a clear indication that Georgia’s European future was in jeopardy.
Simultaneously, EU–Georgia relations entered what analysts described as a deepening deadlock. A December 2025 analysis noted that democratic backsliding in Tbilisi, combined with fragmented and inconsistent responses from EU institutions and member states, had weakened the EU’s leverage and contributed to a political stalemate. The article argued that Georgia’s recalibration of its foreign policy, coupled with internal democratic regression, had fundamentally altered the dynamics of EU–Georgia engagement. This deadlock reflected both Georgia’s internal political choices and the EU’s struggle to respond effectively to authoritarian drift in a candidate country.
The year ended with further signs of international concern. In late December, MEP Markéta Gregorová stated that Georgia’s EU candidacy was “effectively at a standstill,” noting that while the status might not be formally revoked, it had already been politically frozen. She emphasized that the EU no longer viewed Georgia as a realistic candidate under current conditions and warned that the country’s European future was in peril unless democratic norms were restored. Her remarks captured the prevailing sentiment in Brussels: Georgia’s democratic backsliding had fundamentally undermined its credibility as a European partner.
Taken together, the events of 2025 reveal a country undergoing a profound transformation. Democratic institutions weakened, the ruling party consolidated power, civil society faced systemic repression, and Georgia’s relationship with the European Union deteriorated to its lowest point in decades. The year marked a decisive shift from democratic aspiration to authoritarian consolidation, with consequences that will shape Georgia’s political trajectory for years to come. Whether the country can reverse this decline will depend on the resilience of its civil society, the unity of its democratic forces, and the willingness of international partners to support those fighting for Georgia’s democratic future.