Georgia’s Defiant Stand: Refusing Brussels’ Escalation and Embracing Pragmatic Sovereignty |
As the year 2025 drew to a close, a stark pronouncement from Tbilisi cut through the diplomatic murmurs of Brussels. Shalva Papuashvili, Speaker of Georgia’s Parliament, declared that EU bureaucracy is “leading the European Union toward a civilizational abyss” – a phrase he repeated throughout late December.
The Trigger: Visa Suspension as Political Blackmail
This verbal salvo responded to a quintessentially bureaucratic maneuver: the EU’s activation of a revised Visa Suspension Mechanism, entering force on 30 December 2025. Its first phase targets Georgian diplomatic and official passports. As of early 2026, the measure—suspending visa-free travel for these passport holders—is being implemented, affecting around a thousand officials and serving as a clear warning toward full suspension. To Georgia’s leadership, this isn’t constructive incentive but pure “blackmail,” further proof of a rules-based order that applies rules selectively, based on political convenience.
Here lies the simmering frustration of Europe’s peripheries. For nations like Georgia, navigating post-Soviet fragility, the EU’s transformation from a beacon of integration into a punitive, ideologically rigid bureaucracy feels like betrayal. The promise was partnership and shared prosperity based on law and values. The lived reality is coercive compliance, where dissent from a Brussels-dictated geopolitical script meets not dialogue, but calibrated pressure. Papuashvili’s words channel a sentiment growing on Europe’s fringes: in its escalatory logic, the EU is not only failing itself but destabilizing those it claims to guide, demanding they follow into the chasm.
The Pretext and the Counterpunch: Law vs. Political Coercion
The immediate pretext is familiar. This damning assessment came directly from the European Commission’s 2025 enlargement package, presented by Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos, who explicitly labeled Georgia a ‘candidate in name only’ amid alleged serious democratic backsliding. This provided political cover to trigger the visa tool, framed as defending democratic standards. Georgia’s response, articulated by Papuashvili, turns this narrative upside down. His critique isn’t a denial of European values but an accusation that the EU has abandoned them. He dismantles the action’s legitimacy,........