EU–Georgia Human Rights Dialogue Postponed
The Annual Human Rights Dialogue meeting between Georgia and the European Union, scheduled for November 21 in Brussels, has been postponed to an undetermined date.
European Commission spokesperson Anitta Hipper confirmed the postponement, saying it was “due to impediments from the Georgian side,” adding the EU “stands ready to hold a meeting in this regard to present the EU’s position on human rights.” A source familiar with the discussions told Civil.ge that the meeting was postponed after Georgian authorities included a sanctioned official in the planned delegation list.
The postponement of the technical meeting comes amid deteriorating relations between Tbilisi and Brussels, marked by the continued absence of high-level engagement. In its 2025 Enlargement Report, the Commission sharply criticized Georgia for backsliding across almost all areas and described it as “a candidate country in name only.” Georgia was also not invited to the EU Commission’s Enlargement Forum on November 18.
EU officials have repeatedly urged the Georgian authorities to repeal anti-democratic laws targeting civil society organizations, independent media, and LGBT+ people, to ensure freedom of assembly and expression, to release those it considers politically imprisoned, and to reverse course overall.
Human Rights Dialogues are one of the primary means of implementing the EU’s external human rights policy and were developed as an instrument aimed at “putting human rights at the core of its action,” according to official guidelines. They are based on terms of reference negotiated with individual countries and cover a wide range of legislative, regulatory, and other developments. The Dialogue meetings take place alternately in Brussels and the partner country, involving representatives of the EU External Action Service (EEAS) as well as representatives from both government and civil society in the partner countries. The last 16th Human Rights Dialogue meeting was held in Tbilisi in 2023, and the round scheduled for 2024 was postponed.
The European Commission’s 2025 Enlargement Report delivered its harshest assessment yet of Georgia’s human rights record, warning that “the situation has significantly further deteriorated” and that the country “has experienced serious democratic backsliding, with a rapid erosion of the rule of law and fundamental rights being severely restricted.”
It cited “the systemic and systematic repressive actions of the authorities, including legislation curtailing civic space and fundamental rights, the functioning of independent media and targeting LGBTIQ persons, excessive use of force in full impunity by the law enforcement authorities and hostile rhetoric against the EU,” which it said “are in stark contrast with EU values and the actions expected from an EU candidate country.”
According to the report, “widespread human rights violations were consistently observed.” It stressed that human rights “are being severely curtailed and are undermined by the adoption of new repressive laws and amendments to existing laws that infringe upon fundamental rights, including equality and non-discrimination, the freedoms of expression, assembly and association, as well as the right to privacy, family life, liberty and security.”
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