Georgian Dream Will Vote for the “Foreign Agent” Law

At a special briefing, the ruling party spokesperson Mamuka Mdinaradze announced that the party will vote for the draft law “On Transparency of Foreign Funding,” which would label all civil society organizations and media that receive at least 20% of their funding from foreign sources as “foreign agents.”

Mdinaradze said that the ruling party’s parliamentary faction has “agreed at the level of principles” to support the law, but “certainly the details are still being discussed”.

He described comparisons with similar Russian legislation as “speculation” – “if someone, whoever it may be, says that this [bill] is analogous to the Russian one, they are simply lying”.

Mdinaradze conceded that the law “is not analogous to the US legislation either, because in both cases [Russia and the US] the law introduces many restrictions”, arguing that there are none in the Georgian draft.

The bill was introduced by the ruling party’s sovereigntist offshoot, the People’s Power faction, which argued that it was modeled on the US Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

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