Georgia's president plans foreign agent law veto as 'symbol'

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili told DW on Wednesday that she still planned to veto the contentious "foreign influence" law that passed a third and final reading in parliament the previous day.

Even though her veto can ultimately be overridden by another vote in parliament, Zourabichvili said that the law had become a "symbol of a number of laws and measures and rhetoric that is taking Georgia away from its European path," and that she therefore planned to veto it as such.

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The rule requires the media organizations, non-governmental organizations and other groups receiving more than one-fifth of their funding from outside Georgia register as "pursuing the interests of a foreign power."

Critics have called it a threat to domestic freedoms and the country's aspirations to join the European Union. The EU has warned it might freeze the country's accession process as a formal candidate member of the bloc, a status it was only granted recently, late last year.

The rules have also drawn comparisons with changes introduced in Russia in recent years. Zourabichvili for her part said that it was........

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