Georgia’s Contested European Trajectory

In Georgia, the current ruling party has exploited the European integration process for both discursive and strategic purposes since it came to power in 2012. Georgia Dream’s seemingly recent deviation from the European course in fact has a longer history; it was already visible in 2014. This process further intensified in 2019, and escalated after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when the party refused to join the EU’s sanctions against Russia and started openly criticizing European officials, while escalating attacks on liberal values.