Georgia shuts EU & NATO info center amid Russian influence concerns
PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo — Founder of the Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili speaks at the Georgian Dream party headquarters in Tbilisi, Georgia Oct. 26, 2024. REUTERS/Irakli Gedenidze
By Felix Light
TBILISI - The Georgian government is to close its information centre on NATO and the European Union, Georgian media reported on Wednesday, citing the country's foreign ministry, amid souring ties between Tbilisi and the West.
According to its website, the information centre aims "to engage our population in Georgia’s European and Euro-Atlantic integration processes and to gain their well-informed support".
The centre, opened in 2005, is based in a large building on Freedom Square in downtown Tbilisi and flies the flags of the EU, the NATO military alliance and Georgia.
Georgia's Interpress news agency reported that the centre is to be merged into the foreign ministry and that some staff have been told they are to be dismissed. The ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Georgia has been an EU candidate member since 2023, while NATO said in 2008 that the mountainous country of 3.6 million would eventually join the alliance.
But though once among the most pro-Western and democratic of the Soviet Union's successor states, Georgia's government has in recent years moved to clamp down on domestic critics, while also rebuilding ties with former imperial overlord, Russia.
Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire ex-prime minister widely seen as Georgia's de facto leader, has said the EU and NATO are controlled by a shadowy "global war party" that seeks to topple the government and drag his country into war with Russia.
Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream party in November 2024 paused EU accession talks until 2028, abruptly halting a popular national goal that is written into the country's constitution.
The EU has said Tbilisi's application has been frozen over laws on "foreign agents" and LGBT rights that Brussels has criticised as restrictive and influenced by Russian policies .
Georgian Dream says it still wants to eventually join the EU and NATO, but that it also wants to keep the peace with its huge northern neighbour, as well as preserve the country's traditional Christian values.
The United States imposed sanctions on Ivanishvili last December, accusing him of dismantling Georgian democracy in the interests of Russia.
Tbilisi and Moscow have had no formal diplomatic ties since 2008, when Russia defeated Georgia in a brief war over two Moscow-backed separatist regions.
(Reporting by Felix LightEditing by Gareth Jones // REUTERS)
