As a critical decision on Georgia's EU candidacy looms, the country's No. 1 European ally visited Tbilisi in a show of last-minute support.
What's unclear is whether the support of that ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is going to help bolster Georgia's EU chances or sabotage them.
The Hungarian leader's two-day visit to Georgia on October 11 and 12 was the latest step in the rapidly developing partnership between the two countries, and in particular between Orban and his Georgian counterpart, Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili.
The two have bonded as Gharibashvili and the ruling Georgian Dream party have taken a sharp turn toward social conservatism in recent years, promoting an identity for Georgia that Orban had already championed for Hungary: a Europeanness that foregrounds not liberalism and democracy but Christianity and "traditional values."
Georgia and Hungary are "united by commitment to traditional and eternal values, which have played a decisive role in preserving our history, culture, [and] identity," Gharibashvili said during a joint appearance with Orban on this visit.
At an official dinner, Orban expanded on that theme, declaring it "miraculous" that Georgia and Hungary have both maintained unique identities for centuries in often-unfriendly surroundings. That miracle, he said, "provides…a political basis for the relationship between the two countries."
Partnership Agreement
The political relationship has indeed been burgeoning: The two countries signed a strategic partnership agreement last year, and, this spring, Gharibashvili was a keynote speaker at the Budapest edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a decades-old gathering of right-wing Americans that Orban has lately taken international.
At the same time, Gharibashvili and Georgian Dream have been following Hungary's political example. As Orban has done in Hungary, the Georgian leadership has sought to strengthen ruling-party control of nominally independent bodies like the judiciary and state cultural institutions. Georgian Dream has also followed Orban's lead in adopting a Kyiv-skeptic stance on the Russian war in Ukraine.
Orban and Gharibashvili, along with their wives, make a toast in Tsinandali, Georgia, on October 10.
A notorious "foreign agent" law that the government failed to push through this spring was based less on the Russian model that it was most often compared to than on a similar Hungarian law, Western diplomats in Tbilisi, speaking on background, have said.
It all adds up to what Thomas de Waal, a scholar at Carnegie Europe, recently called "the Orbanizing of Georgia." With their increasingly illiberal approach at home and transactional foreign policy with their Western partners, Georgia and Hungary are taking a similar path as Azerbaijan and Turkey, de Waal said.
"Orban and [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, both recent victors in elections, also show Georgian Dream a successful strategy for defeating an opposition alliance," de Waal wrote. "The chief weapon is polarization. You tell voters you are the bastion of stability and decency, mortally threatened by an opposition linked to degenerate globalist forces."
Hungary, though, is already in the EU and can challenge the EU's principles from the inside. Georgia is doing the same, while also trying to persuade the rest of the bloc's members to admit it. Western diplomats in Tbilisi privately say the EU has already had enough trouble with Hungary in the bloc -- Budapest has repeatedly used its veto power to thwart initiatives supported by the rest of the bloc -- and so are wary of admitting another potentially difficult member.
Quid Pro Quo
Georgia applied for EU candidate status shortly after Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, along with Ukraine and Moldova. While those two latter countries were awarded candidate status in June 2022, Georgia was instead given an EU "perspective" and a list of reforms it should implement. Those include reducing political polarization and bolstering the independence of the judicial system -- areas in which critics have singled out Hungary for backsliding in a similar fashion.
SEE ALSO: Traveling On A Chinese-Built Highway In Georgia That's Wrapped Up In GeopoliticsOrban has repeatedly criticized the EU's decision to advance Georgia's candidacy less quickly than those of Ukraine and Moldova. "What happened was very unfair toward your country, and it must be corrected as soon as possible," he said in Tbilisi.
Many in Georgia's political opposition and anti-government civil society groups argue that the government's efforts to fulfill the EU's demands since that decision leave much to be desired. They point to the government's spotty implementation of the reforms, as well its foreign policy moves -- such as mixed signals on the Russia-Ukraine war and the proposed foreign agent law -- that they say have called into question the country's once ironclad devotion to a Euro-Atlantic orientation.
The European Commission, the EU's executive body, is slated to report on Georgia's progress by the end of October in its annual enlargement report, which will also assess Moldova's and Ukraine's bids to join the bloc. Then in December, the EU's 27 member states will vote on whether to advance Georgia's application.
There are indications that Orban is seeking to wield his veto power for Georgia's benefit. Citing sources in Brussels, RFE/RL's Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak has reported that it is possible that Hungary "will push for Tbilisi's candidate status as quid pro quo for agreeing to give Ukraine the green light to start EU accession talks. Budapest has used its veto extensively in recent months on various political issues, often related to Ukraine -- so don't rule out that this could happen again."
Supporters hold up EU and Georgian flags as part of a rally for European integration, in Tbilisi in July 2022.
That RFE/RL report was widely discussed in Tbilisi's political circles and evoked mixed reactions among pro-EU Georgians.
"This strategy, to blackmail the EU through Hungary, will backfire at some point," said Kornely Kakachia, the head of the Tbilisi-based think tank Georgian Institute of Politics. "This will alienate Georgia from core Europe, Western Europe, and this is not in the best interest of Georgia," he told RFE/RL.
Orban's interest in Georgia's EU aspirations appears to be linked to his desire to strengthen the illiberal forces within the bloc, analyst Volodymyr Posviatenko wrote in a recent blog post for the Rondeli Foundation, a Tbilisi-based think tank. Similar motivations have inspired Orban's advocacy for expanding the EU into the Balkans, he argued.
The Hungarian leader hopes to "use Georgia as a bargaining chip to blackmail the EU and increase Hungary's leverage over the decision-making process," Posviatenko wrote. "Moreover, the promotion of illiberal Georgia's accelerated accession process correlates with Orban's goal of creating a group of illiberal states within the EU."
Orban alluded to this strategy in his comments in Tbilisi: "Protecting Christian traditions is a precondition for Europe's competitiveness, and we will welcome if the countries grounded in this legacy decide to draw closer to the EU," he said at an appearance with Gharibashvili.
While the two current leaders have lately built a strong personal relationship, Orban's interest in Georgia in fact dates to the previous regime of President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is now Georgian Dream's enemy No. 1.
Then President Mikheil Saakashvili (left) and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban take part in a welcoming ceremony in Tbilisi in 2012.
Four days before 2012 parliamentary elections, Orban appeared with Saakashvili at a campaign rally supporting the then-ruling United National Movement, the party which the former Georgian president founded. Tbilisi think-tank head Kakachia noted that this was in a period when Saakashvili had become more authoritarian, and the Georgian Dream coalition that ultimately won those elections was seen as a democratizing force.
When Georgian Dream took power, some senior figures from the Saakashvili administration found exile in Hungary, including former Justice Minister Zurab Adeishvili and Erekle Kodua, a former senior security official. That fact was not lost on some during Orban's most recent visit.
"I appeal to the prime minister (Gharibashvili) and ask him: Did he speak with his friend Orban about extraditing to Georgia former members of the United National Movement regime, former officials, criminals, odious figures such as Adeishvili and Kodua?" asked Anna Buchkuri, a member of parliament from the For Georgia party, which is not aligned with either the current or former ruling parties. "You know that Orban's government offered them asylum."
Economics, too, have drawn Georgia and Hungary together. The two are linked in an ambitious project that would construct an electricity cable under the Black Sea to transmit power from Azerbaijan via Georgia and Romania to Hungary. The EU has endorsed the project as a means of weaning Europe off Russian energy; European Council President Ursula von der Leyen said during a signing ceremony that it would "bring the European Union closer to our partners in the South Caucasus region."
While, according to Kakachia, this amounts to strengthening an "authoritarian axis," the EU's involvement "legitimizes this axis."
"Everyone is benefiting from this," he said.