From Transparency to Trap: How Georgia’s “Foreign Agent” Legislation Became a Blueprint for Silencing Civil Society
This article is prepared by Christina Koikaran, BCL/JD Candidate at the McGill Faculty of Law, and intern at BCNL through the McGill Centre of Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.
Every authoritarian crackdown on civil society begins the same way: with a law promoted as a transparency measure.
Georgia’s experience over the past three years offers the clearest illustration in recent European history of how “foreign agent” legislation is not a single act but a process. Each version is presented as a routine transparency measure; each is found by independent legal bodies to fail standards of legality, necessity, and proportionality, and each is used to justify the next, stricter iteration. That process is now complete in Georgia, and the legislative architecture it produced can influence and inspire political parties in neighbouring countries, including Bulgaria.
Photo: Demonstrators sit on the ground as they hold a rally to protest a bill on “foreign agents” in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 2, 2024. IRAKLI GEDENIDZE / REUTERS – Le Monde UN calls on Georgia to withdraw divisive “foreign agent” bill
The FARA cover story
The Georgian Dream party’s first attempt to restrict civil society organizations (CSOs) with foreign funding came in 2023, framed through comparison to the United States’ Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA).[1] The comparison was deliberate: Russian President Vladimir Putin used the same framing when introducing Russia’s own “foreign agents” law in 2012.[1]
But the resemblance is largely rhetorical. U.S. FARA is itself a more troubled statute than its proponents acknowledge. While it formally requires a principal-agent relationship, meaning an entity must act at the direction or control of, or at the request of, a foreign principal, both “request” and the threshold of being “financed in major part” are undefined in the Act.[2][22] Its definition of “covered political activity” encompasses any attempt to influence “any section of the public within the United States” on domestic or foreign policy, broad enough to cover a wide range of ordinary public advocacy.[22] U.S. nonprofits have been required to register for printing banners at a foreigner’s request, co-organizing an academic conference abroad, and receiving a foreign government grant for environmental work.[22] FARA has been used against civil society groups in politically motivated ways since the McCarthy era, and as recently as 2026, a letter from state attorneys general claimed over 150 U.S. nonprofits should register for receiving money from non-U.S. private donors.[22] The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which advocates for FARA reform, particularly in the U.S., notes that the Act’s broad language has “repeatedly been used to justify anti-democratic ‘foreign agent’ laws in countries like Russia, Nicaragua, and Kyrgyzstan.”[22] In other words, the comparison to U.S. FARA does not defend Georgia’s legislation; it indicts both. Georgia’s laws still go further. Where U.S. FARA requires, at a minimum, some evidence of a relationship with a foreign principal, Georgia’s 2024 law requires none. The mere receipt of more than 20% of annual income from any foreign source is sufficient for mandatory registration as an entity “serving the interests of a foreign power.” [2][3]
A legal assessment by Caucasus Open Space Estonia (COS) found that the combination of laws enacted since 2024, taken together as an interlocking system, conflicts with internationally recognized standards on freedom of association, freedom of expression, and the principle of legal certainty.[3]
This framing has also begun feeding back into European institutions themselves. The European Civic Forum’s Civic Space Report 2026 documents an additional complication: the European Commission’s 2023 proposed Directive on Transparency of Interest Representation on behalf of Third Countries, which remains under negotiation and has not yet been adopted, has already been cited by actors in Georgia and Bulgaria to justify significantly broader domestic proposals.[3a] That a narrower, more carefully safeguarded EU instrument can be cited in this way illustrates how the transparency framing operates: it provides a sense of democratic legitimacy for legislation whose operative effect is the stigmatization and constraint of independent civil society.
The escalation pattern
Georgia has enacted three successive pieces of legislation since 2023, each independently titled, each broader and more punitive than the last. The first bill, introduced in 2023 and labelled a “transparency” measure, was withdrawn under mass protest, and Georgian Dream pledged not to revisit it. Less than a year later, the party introduced a formally separate statute: the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence. This is a new, independent law, not an amendment to the withdrawn 2023 bill. Parliament passed it 84 votes to 4 in May 2024 and overrode a presidential veto.[4] The Venice Commission, in its urgent opinion the same month, found the law problematic on two specific grounds. First, the definition of “political activity,” covering any activity intended to influence government, state institutions, or “any part of society,” is broad enough to encompass the routine work of any civil society organization: publishing reports, conducting research, organizing events, and monitoring government conduct. Second, the registration obligation triggers automatically on a financial threshold, with no requirement to show that the organization actually acts under foreign direction. The Venice Commission found this both disproportionate and incompatible with the principle of legal certainty.[5]
In April 2025, Georgian Dream adopted a second, entirely separate statute: the Georgian Foreign Agents Registration Act (GEOFARA). This is not an amendment to the 2024 Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence; it is once again, a new, independent statute operating alongside it. Where the 2024 law applied to organizations, GEOFARA extends the foreign agent framework to natural persons: any individual engaging in broadly defined “political activity” with foreign funding or under foreign influence must now register as a foreign agent. The definition covers any activity aimed at influencing government, state institutions, or any part of Georgian society, broad enough to include publishing reports, legal analysis, advocacy, public events, and monitoring state institutions. In other words, the ordinary work of any active civil society professional.[6][7]
The critical distinction between the two laws is the penalty regime. The 2024 Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence imposed administrative fines for failure to register. GEOFARA introduced criminal liability: imprisonment of six months to five years for individuals who do not comply.[6] The pace matters. It took Russia five years to extend its foreign agent framework to independent media and seven years to apply it to individuals. Georgia moved from a registration-only law to individual criminal liability in under twelve months.[8]
A legal network, not a single law
The 2024 Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence and GEOFARA do not operate in isolation. They form part of a wider set of interlocking statutes, each targeting a different dimension of civil society activity.[3] The Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence established the registration obligation. GEOFARA criminalized non-compliance and extended the framework to individuals. Amendments to the Broadcasting Law introduced a blanket prohibition on foreign funding for media outlets, without distinguishing between state-controlled foreign actors and independent foundations, a distinction proportionality analysis requires.[9] Amendments to the Law on Grants required government pre-approval before any foreign grant could be received, and made receiving an “unauthorised” grant a criminal offence carrying up to six years’ imprisonment.[9]
The enforcement architecture was constructed to match. The Anti-Corruption Bureau, later replaced by the State Audit Service, received authority to demand any information it considered necessary and to refer suspected violations to criminal investigators without an independent judicial check. The Venice Commission specifically criticized this: the enforcement body was granted excessively wide discretion without adequate independence guarantees, creating a significant risk of selective or politically motivated application.[10]
The combined effect is that an organization or individual need not violate the foreign agent registration rules to face criminal liability. Under the Law on Grants, receiving a foreign grant before obtaining government approval is itself a criminal offence, even if the grant is entirely legitimate and the organization has never been designated a foreign agent. Under GEOFARA, an individual engaging in “political activity” with any foreign funding may be prosecuted for non-registration, even if the activity, publishing a report, attending a conference, or organizing a public discussion, would be entirely lawful in any democratic state.[3][11]
The Venice Commission concluded in October 2025 that this legislative package should be repealed.[12] Its opinion identified specific grounds: GEOFARA’s open-ended formulations undermine legal certainty; the Anti-Corruption Bureau was granted excessively wide discretion without adequate independence guarantees; the criminal sanctions are disproportionate and insufficiently justified; and the Law on Grants amendments introduced government pre-approval of foreign funding without demonstrating that such a restriction was necessary. The Commission found the combined framework inconsistent with Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Direct consequences for Georgian civil society
The consequences were immediate and concrete. The Prosecutor’s Office froze the bank accounts of seven independent organizations. NGOs received letters threatening criminal prosecution for failure to register as “foreign agents.” Civil society leaders were summoned for questioning under Article 319 of the Criminal Code, concerning alleged assistance in “hostile activities” for foreign entities.[10][13] The Anti-Corruption Bureau, acting under older legislation, not the new foreign agent laws, demanded that NGOs disclose the personal data of their beneficiaries and programme participants.[13]
By early 2026, organizations faced what the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders described as a stark choice: accept the label of “foreign agent,” cease operations, leave the country, or risk imprisonment.[14]
The restrictions have not been limited to civil society organizations and the media. By 2026, Georgian authorities had enacted a parallel set of constraints on the right to peaceful assembly. New amendments to the Law on Assemblies and Demonstrations require prior police notification for demonstrations held where people or vehicles are moving and empower police to change the venue or timing of a protest if it threatens traffic flow. Protesters are prohibited from blocking pavements. Changes to the Administrative Offences Code extended 60-day detention periods to offences such as wearing masks or erecting temporary structures during demonstrations, even for first-time offences. New Criminal Code amendments introduced imprisonment of up to two years for repeated protest-related offences. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights described these measures as incompatible with the principles of necessity and proportionality required under the European Convention on Human Rights: restrictions on assembly must be limited to what is strictly required to address a demonstrated threat, and these provisions do not meet that standard. [17a]
Bulgaria: the same script, a different stage
The far-right Revival Party introduced a Foreign Agents Registration Act in 2022, resubmitting it in every successive parliament, four in total, before it was most recently rejected in February 2025.[18] It is worth noting that the Bulgarian bill does not follow the Georgian or Russian pattern of gradual escalation. Where Russia and Georgia began with narrower laws targeting organizations and expanded scope over the years, Bulgaria’s Revival bill targeted both legal entities and natural persons from the outset, imposed a five-year “foreign agent” designation, and prohibited educational and political activities. It was an extreme opening position, framed, like all its counterparts, as a transparency measure.[18]
Revival also proposed amendments to the Pre-School and School Education Act, introducing fines of between €5,000 and €10,000 for foreign-funded entities conducting educational activities, research, or surveys involving students or school personnel. [18b]
At the same time, parliamentary debate surrounding the legislation became a vehicle for broader attacks on civil society. On November 5th, 2025, the Bulgarian parliament established a temporary commission specifically investigating organizations funded by George Soros. [18c]
The European Civic Forum described this as part of a broader “feedback loop in which institutional scrutiny legitimizes politically motivated reputational attacks, and vice versa.” [18c]
The Georgian case illustrates why the moment of defeat matters less than the moment of normalization. When Georgia’s 2023 bill was defeated, Georgian Dream pledged not to reintroduce it. Less than a year later, a new statute, the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence, was introduced and passed. A year after that, GEOFARA extended criminal liability to individuals. Each iteration was presented as a distinct initiative; each built directly on the last. Bulgaria’s Revival Party has attempted its version four times. The bill has been rejected each time. The pattern in Georgia is that rejection is not the end of the process; it is part of it.
Bulgarian civil society mobilized rapidly against the 2022 proposal, gathering thousands of signatures against the bill and organizing broad cross-sector opposition.[19] But Georgia’s experience demonstrates that repeated legislative attacks can themselves become a form of pressure, particularly in environments where civil society depends heavily on unstable project-based funding.[20]
Although Revival’s electoral decline in 2026 reduced the immediate legislative threat, Georgia’s experience suggests that such proposals rarely disappear permanently. [20a]
Why the FARA comparison matters
Supporters of Georgia’s legislation repeatedly invoked the American FARA statute as proof that the law represented an ordinary transparency measure. But as the Venice Commission and multiple legal assessments concluded, the divergence between the U.S. model and the Georgian framework was not one of degree, but of kind.[2][21]
The invocation of FARA functioned less as a legal comparison than as a political shield. It provided democratic language for legislation whose practical effect was the systematic restriction of independent civil society.[3][12][16]
Georgia’s experience demonstrates that foreign-agent laws do not emerge fully formed. They evolve incrementally: first through registration requirements, then through administrative burdens, then through restrictions on funding and participation, and finally through criminalization.
Bulgaria has defeated its FARA proposal several times. Georgia’s lesson is not that these laws always succeed, but that they return revised, normalized, and expanded, until political conditions allow them to pass. Whether Bulgaria’s new political settlement consolidates or merely postpones that risk depends on what the incoming government chooses to prioritize, and on whether civil society retains the institutional capacity to respond when it matters.
The material is produced with the financial support of the America for Bulgaria Foundation within the project “Stronger Together: Engaging Other Sectors in Civil Society Initiatives (2026–2028)”.
Footnotes
[1] BCNL. U.S. law on ‘foreign agents’ (FARA). 2022. Available at: https://bcnl.org/news/zakonat-na-sasht-za-chuzhdestrannite-agenti-fara.html
[2] Venice Commission. Urgent Opinion on the Law of Georgia on Transparency of Foreign Influence. CDL-AD(2024)020, 24 June 2024, §§38–41. Available at: https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2024)020-e
[3] Caucasus Open Space (COS). Analysis of Amendments to the Law on Grants and Related Legislative Acts (2024–2026). On file with author, 2026.
[3a] European Civic Forum. Civic Space Report 2026 – Horizontal Analysis. May 2026, p. 18.
[4] Council on Foreign Relations. What Georgia’s Foreign Agent Law Means for Its Democracy. August 2024. Available at: https://www.cfr.org/articles/what-georgias-foreign-agent-law-means-its-democracy
[5] Venice Commission, CDL-AD(2024)020, op. cit.
[6] Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (OMCT-FIDH). Georgia: Adoption of the new Foreign Agents Registration Act. 30 April 2025. Available at: https://www.fidh.org/en/region/europe-central-asia/georgia/georgia-adoption-of-the-new-foreign-agents-registration-act
[7] COS Analysis, op. cit.
[8] OMCT-FIDH, Georgia: Adoption of the new FARA, op. cit.
[9] OMCT-FIDH. Georgia: Authorities must repeal new amendments on the Law “On Grants” and other repressive legislation criminalizing human rights work. 18 March 2026. Available at: https://www.fidh.org/en/region/europe-central-asia/georgia/georgia-authorities-must-repeal-new-amendments-on-the-law-on-grants
[10] COS Analysis, op. cit.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Venice Commission. Opinion on the Law of Georgia on registration of foreign agents, the amendments to the Law on grants and other Laws relating to “foreign influence.” October 2025. Available at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/venice-commission
[13] Ana Tavxelidze. Civil Society Under Pressure: The Georgian Case. The Advocates for Human Rights, October 2025.
[14] Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (OMCT-FIDH). Georgia: Adoption of the new Foreign Agents Registration Act. 30 April 2025. Available at: https://www.fidh.org/en/region/europe-central-asia/georgia/georgia-adoption-of-the-new-foreign-agents-registration-act
[14a] European Civic Forum. Civic Space Report 2026 – Horizontal Analysis. May 2026, p. 17.
[15] Reporters Without Borders. World Press Freedom Index 2025. Georgia score: 50.5.
[16] Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights. Georgia: Commissioner O’Flaherty calls for law enforcement accountability, repeal of restrictive “foreign influence” laws. April 2026. Available at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner
[17a] Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights. Georgia: Commissioner O’Flaherty calls for law enforcement accountability, repeal of restrictive “foreign influence” laws and sustained support for the human rights of internally displaced persons. 21 April 2026. Available at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/georgia-commissioner-o-flaherty-calls-for-law-enforcement-accountability-repeal-of-restrictive-foreign-influence-laws-and-sustained-support-for-the-human-rights-of-internally-displaced-persons
[18] BCNL. European Civic Forum’s Civil Space Watch 2025: Summary of the Bulgarian Chapter. 2025. Available at: https://civic-forum.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Civic-Space-Report-2025-Bulgaria.pdf
See also: European Civic Forum. Civic Space Report 2026 – Horizontal Analysis. May 2026.
[18b] European Civic Forum. Civic Space Report 2026 – Horizontal Analysis. May 2026, p. 18.
[18c] European Civic Forum. Civic Space Report 2026 – Horizontal Analysis. May 2026, p. 15.
[19] BCNL. European Civic Forum’s Civil Space Watch 2025: Summary of the Bulgarian Chapter. 2025. Available at: https://civic-forum.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Civic-Space-Report-2025-Bulgaria.pdf
[20] Ibid.
[20a] European Council on Foreign Relations. “Radev’s way: What Europe can expect from Bulgaria’s new political constellation.” April 2026. Available at: https://ecfr.eu/article/radevs-way-what-europe-can-expect-from-bulgarias-new-political-constellation/
See also: Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW). “Bulgaria’s elections: Radev secures a breakthrough victory.” 20 April 2026. Available at: https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2026-04-20/bulgarias-elections-radev-secures-a-breakthrough-victory
[21] Venice Commission, CDL-AD(2024)020, op. cit., §§38–41.
[22] International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). “Reforming the Foreign Agents Registration Act to Protect U.S. Nonprofits.” March 2026. Available at: https://www.icnl.org/our-work/united-states-program/reforming-the-foreign-agents-registration-act-to-protect-u-s-nonprofits