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Is Georgia's 'foreign influence' law about to become a source of new troubles for Europe?

2024-05-13 00:00:00.0 欧洲新闻电视台-欧洲新闻原网页

Russia has been pounding Ukraine's Kharkiv region with dozens of strikes since Saturday.

Several residential buildings were destroyed or damaged, and the body of one person was found under the rubble.

Heavy fighting has been mounting since Saturday following Russia's sudden incursion in the Vovchansk area.

Over 5,000 residents have already been evacuated to safer areas.

Vovchansk city military administration head Tamaz Gambarashvili said local authorities would aim to "completely evacuate the population within one or two days".

"There were small (Russian) groups that tried to enter the city streets, but the armed forces cut off these attempts", he added.

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In his Sunday address, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the city is "under constant Russian fire", describing the situation as "extremely difficult".

On the same day, Ukraine hit back with a massive shelling on Belgorod, partially destroying a residential building and killing at least 15 people.

The Belgorod region, on Russia's western border, has also been the target of a large number of strikes.

The so-called "Russian law" is to play a crucial role before next October's Georgian parliamentary elections.

The ruling party, Georgian Dream, is willing to reduce drastically the political weight of the NGOs that have been receiving funding from abroad, especially from the EU and the US.

Through the formally defined "foreign influence" law, the Kremlin-friendly Georgian government and parliamentary majority aim to force the NGOs that receive more than 20% of funding from abroad to register as "foreign agents".

A number of international human rights NGOs with a presence in Georgia, including Transparency International and Human Rights Watch, will be listed on a mandatory public record and declare themselves as "foreign financed structures".

Why is this important?

Both profit and non-profit organisations that receive outside funding and sign contracts or legal agreements are already registered with the Ministry of Finance as an ordinary legal measure for tax purposes.

However, according to the new "foreign influence" law, NGOs must declare themselves as "foreign bodies" and provide details about who is allocating the financing.

This immediately raises the question: if the Ministry of Finance already has information concerning where the funding comes from, why force the organisations to register again and label it as influenced by foreign actors?

According to the law's critics, the answer is simple: in legal and political controversies, they can be accused of acting against the national interest of the country where they operate.

Hundreds of thousands of Georgian citizens have been taking to the streets of Tbilisi for weeks, asking the government to withdraw the bill.

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The protesters regard the definition of "foreign influence" as too ambiguous, and the wording looks unfit for a legal document according to the rule of law principles.

In Georgian society's eyes, the bill is incredibly similar to a law that entered into force in Russia in 2012, when the Russian Federation initiated a clampdown on public freedoms and civil rights.

How does the ruling party justify the move?

The ruling party's explanations about the law's purpose have disquieting echoes in pro-EU and pro-Western public opinion.

"The financing of NGOs, which presents itself as help for us, is in reality for strengthening (foreign) intelligence agencies, and for bringing them to power," Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire oligarch chairman and founder of the Georgian Dream party, said last month at the beginning of the parliamentary process of the draft bill.

He also said that the law would prevent the Western "global party of the war" from interfering in Georgian politics.

Billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, leader of the created by him the Georgian Dream party greets demonstrators during a rally in support of "Russian law" in Tbilisi, GeorgiaShakh Aivazov/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved

Ivanishvili has had an erratic relationship with the EU and Russia. When his political force came to power in 2012, he encouraged Georgia's application to join the EU, yet two years ago, the European Parliament proposed measures against Ivanishvili for helping the Kremlin avoid the EU sanctions.

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Georgia is an EU candidate country, but Tbilisi didn't join the bloc's sanctions against Moscow.

Zourabishvili as the counterweight

The former Soviet Republic in the Southern Caucasus has been living a precarious geopolitical existence since its independence in 1991.

It was defeated in a war with Russia in 2008, with the runaway Kremlin-backed para-state of Abkhazia currently occupying some 20% of its territory. Since then, the various Georgian governments have had to strike a balance between Moscow and the West.

Georgian Dream's Irakli Kobakhidze, a proxy of Ivanishvili, is the current prime minister.

According to the protesters who have been opposing the so-called "Russian law", both political leaders are pro-Russians and are working in the Kremlin's best interest.

President Salomé Zourabishvili is outspokenly against the law, yet her veto power is ineffective if the draft gets the approval of 76 MPs, allowing the parliament to override it.

In turn, Zourabishvili has turned into an informal guarantor of Georgia's European and Western commitments.

A former French diplomat of Georgian origins, the president has distanced herself from Ivanishvili and started making an independent policy, entering into collision with the executive.

With domestic political polarisation at its highest, the general elections scheduled for next October are set to become the turning point of the Georgian geopolitical swing.

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The opposition is weak and divided, and the citizens keep spontaneously gathering for mass pro-EU rallies.

The NGOs should become the guarantors of the transparency of the electoral process.

If the president falls, the balance is gone

At the institutional level, Zourabishvili has taken the strongest and the most meaningful critical stance. Yet, as of next December, there could be a new president.

According to a constitutional amendment, the president's election has now been handed over to the parliament.

By showing up in thousands to the ongoing protests, the Georgians are massively showing their commitment to the EU in Tbilisi and might be the driving force that could swing the country westward. Yet, the ruling party will try to receive the needed electoral support from the rural areas.

There is a concrete risk that Georgia could lose its fragile stability, which would further fuel the ongoing tensions between the West and Russia.

If an openly pro-Western government were to win the October elections, it would be a major setback for the Kremlin in the Southern Caucasus.

When Emily first heard about Belgium's decision to create Europe's first labour law for sex workers in Europe, she was excited that her working conditions would finally improve.

"In this way, we will get a wider choice of safe places where we can offer our services in a self-determined way because, at the moment, that's not really the case," Emily, who lives in a major city in Belgium, told Euronews.

An independent sex worker for three years, Emily (name changed to protect her identity) has personally experienced the lack of support for sex workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, where many lost their income yet were ineligible for government support as their sector did not officially exist.

She and others are hoping this will change with the introduction of Europe's — and the world's — first labour law for sex workers in Belgium.

What does the new law mean in practice?

The legislation, which was approved with 93 votes in favour, 33 abstentions and 0 votes against earlier this month, allows procurers to provide Belgian sex workers with an employment contract for the first time.

The change gives sex workers access to social security provisions such as pensions, health insurance and annual vacation. It also gives sex workers protection from work-related risks, including implementing standards on who can become an employer.

A chair inside of a sex-workers booth stands empty in Antwerp, 3 November 2020 AP Photo/Virginia Mayo

Daan Bauwens of the Belgian Union for Sex Workers UTSOPI explained that the new law places restrictions on who can hand out contracts to sex workers — limiting the possibility of exploitation.

People who have previous convictions such as human trafficking and theft will not be able to become employers, Bauwens told Euronews, "This is a very important thing because up till now, it was possible."

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Sex workers are also entitled to further key rights, including being able to refuse a client or a sexual act, as well as interrupt a sexual act at any point.

If any of these rights are invoked more than 10 times in one year, either the employee or employer can call a government mediator to intervene.

Different strokes, different folks

Belgium keeps being an outlier in the European context when it comes to answering the demands of sex workers' unions.

Just two years ago, it became the first country in Europe to decriminalise sex work in Europe.

Other countries in Europe have roughly either legalised sex work to some extent or followed the so-called "Nordic model", which criminalises the procuring and purchasing of sex work.

The different legalisation models in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria mean that each country has a distinct set of conditions that must be fulfilled to be able to carry out sex work legally, Bauwens said.

In this Friday March 29, 2019, file image tourists bathing in a red glow emanating from the windows and peep shows' neon lights, in Amsterdam's red light district. Peter Dejong/Copyright 2019 The AP. All rights reserved

In some places, a sex worker could still be criminalised for carrying out work if they can't meet certain preconditions, something that would not be the case under a system of full decriminalisation.

Furthermore, countries such as Germany, which follow their own legalisation model, have said they are considering tweaks to the existing rules, such as criminalising the clients of sex workers under the Nordic model.

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Yet, according to Emily, those kinds of changes only make sex work more dangerous.

"If you criminalise the clients, the good clients, the ones that want to respect the law, will stop seeing sex workers," she explained.

"The ones that don't care about the law will continue seeing sex workers anyway. As a result, we get worse clients."

Safety and well-being before national politics

Europe has long been unable to agree on a unified model to regulate sex work. Last September, the European Parliament adopted a divisive report on how to regulate sex work that outlined the need to reduce the demand for sex work and punish clients.

Despite the report having no legislative impact, multiple sex worker's associations and NGOs were critical of its recommendations.

"In some ways, this is not a pan-European matter — as the European Commission has told us when we apply for funding, it depends on the member states," Executive Director of the European Sex Workers Rights Alliance Sabrina Sanchez told Euronews.

Emily agreed that the different and competing approaches are symbolic of national politics. Yet, what should matter is everyone's safety and well-being, and full decriminalisation across Europe is the most important first step, followed by strict labour laws, she said.

"If you look at the science, then you will see that studies show that decriminalisation is much more effective in protecting sex workers and that actually, if you criminalise the clients, then you make it much more dangerous to engage in sex work."

"I hope that the international community at one point is going to realise this — and follow Belgium's example," Emily concluded.

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