Day: December 17, 2025
The disputed Georgian Dream-led parliament is wrapping up its fall session by rubber-stamping laws ending voting for Georgians abroad, dissolving the Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Personal Data Protection Service, and scrapping the so-called South Ossetia provisional administration, among others.
The laws adopted during the December 17 extraordinary plenary session also included dismantling the business ombudsman’s office, as well as controversial juvenile justice legislation allowing minors in conflict with the law to be placed in designated facilities.
The vote came on the second day of extraordinary plenary sessions taking place in the last week of the fall session of the disputed legislature. The session, which saw the passage of several controversial bills, including measures significantly curbing protest rights, will officially end with a bureau session on December 19.
Ending Voting Abroad
A new version of the election code, adopted with 79 votes in favor and 11 against, strips Georgian citizens of the right to vote abroad, allowing them to cast ballots only inside the country. The controversial change defines elections, referendums, and plebiscites as voting “taking place within Georgia’s state borders.”
Georgian Dream officials have defended the controversial change as necessary to “strengthen election resilience” against foreign interference. Critics, however, argue that it would disenfranchise Georgian émigré voters, attributing the move to the party’s poor performance in overseas constituencies, where it secured only 13% of the vote in the last parliamentary election.
More than a million Georgians are estimated to reside abroad, and individual Georgian households heavily depend on remittances. Yet only 34,574 were able to cast ballots in 2024, a gap critics attribute to the authorities’ unwillingness to ease hurdles for overseas voters.
Scrapping Data Protection Service, Anti-Corruption Bureau
Georgian Dream MPs also rubber-stamped a legislative package on December 17 abolishing two public agencies – the Personal Data Protection Service and the Anti-Corruption Bureau – which will both cease operations in March 2026.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau was created in 2022 as part of the European Commission’s fourth recommendation for Georgia to obtain EU candidate status. However, the agency was widely seen as having been instrumentalized by the ruling party to crack down on critics. Mandated to enforce repressive legislation, including two “foreign agents” laws and amendments to the Law on Grants, the Bureau, led by Razhden Kuprashvili, subjected dozens of NGOs, media organizations, and civic initiatives to inspections.
Following its abolition, the bureau’s functions will be absorbed by the State Audit Office.
Abolishing South Ossetia Provisional Administration
Georgian Dream also adopted in a final reading a package abolishing the so-called South Ossetia Provisional Administration, which was established in 2007 under then-President Mikheil Saakashvili. Announcing the move in November, the ruling party described the creation of the provisional unit in 2007 as “a grave betrayal of Georgia’s state interests” and one of the “contributing factors to the 2008 Russian military aggression.”
Specifically, parliament voted to declare null and void the laws “On Creating Proper Conditions for the Peaceful Resolution of the Conflict within the Former South Ossetian Autonomous District” and “On Property Restitution and Compensation for Those Affected by the Conflict in the Former South Ossetian Autonomous District on Georgian Territory.”
The provisional unit and its administration will be dissolved by January 1, 2026.
Juvenile Justice Legislation
Another package adopted during the December 17 extraordinary plenary session covers juvenile justice legislation introducing special procedures for children aged 10 to 18 who committed offenses before turning 14. It allows for placing them in designated “family-type” facilities called “House of Care and Support of Minors” for extendable periods of six months each and for a maximum of two years in total.
The facilities are intended to provide psycho-social support, as well as educational and vocational training to minors.
Authorities say the bill follows the “German model” and is intended to rehabilitate and support minors and prevent crime, but critics – including from the professional community of psychologists – have warned it risks stigmatizing children and will fail to deliver the resocialization it promises.
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Georgia: Kobakhidze accuses the EU
Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze mocked a document published on 17 December by the EU Council Presidency, which contained critical assessments of the situation in Georgia.
Kobakhidze said that the EU “decided to admit responsibility for the criminal actions of the Georgian opposition and activists” and added that, personally, he “would not have taken responsibility for actions directed against Georgia’s statehood.”
The EU Council Presidency called on the Georgian authorities to “repeal repressive laws, release all politicians, journalists and activists who have been unfairly detained, and stop using aggressive rhetoric towards the European Union.” It stated that “the actions of the Georgian authorities do not meet the EU’s expectations of a candidate country.”
The document was supported by 26 delegations. However, Hungary did not back it, and due to the lack of consensus, it was published on behalf of the Presidency.
Irakli Kobakhidze:
“In Georgia, people who directly took part in revolutionary processes and attacks on state institutions have been detained.
By calling for their release, the European bureaucracy is, in effect, taking responsibility for these acts against statehood and the constitutional order.
If I were in the position of the European bureaucracy, I would not take responsibility for such criminal actions.
As for the laws the EU calls to repeal, we are talking about the ‘Law on Transparency of Financial Activities,’ and there are no grounds for criticism. This law allowed us to name the so-called NGOs and so-called civil society.
Foreign agents were, in effect, given their real names. And someone in the European bureaucracy does not like that.
In this too, if I were in their place, I would not take responsibility for the anti-state actions carried out over the years by certain organizations, the so-called NGOs, the so-called civil society.
I would call the document presented by the EU Council Presidency an admission of their responsibility for the criminal and anti-state actions committed against the Georgian people and the Georgian state.”
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Georgia: Kobakhidze accuses the EU