The European Commission’s 2025 Enlargement Package delivers its starkest assessment to date of Georgia’s trajectory, concluding that the country has “experienced serious democratic backsliding” and is now a candidate “in name only”.
The finding marks a clear deterioration from December 2023, when Georgia was granted EU candidate status, and sets out a prescriptive list of steps that Tbilisi must take to return to a credible accession path.
EU officials framed the message in unusually direct terms. Presenting the package, Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said the situation in Georgia had “sharply deteriorated”, contrasting it with progress in Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova. In Tbilisi, the EU ambassador, Paweł Herczyński, called the document “devastating” for Georgia’s European aspirations and urged the authorities to “reverse course”.
The Commission cites concerns on rule of law, media freedom, civil society space and alignment with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. In Brussels’ view, restrictive legislation “unprecedented” among candidates and a pattern of pressure on independent actors have halted effective progress on the nine reform steps set out when candidate status was conferred.
Tbilisi rejects the diagnosis. The Georgian government has dismissed the report as biased and politically motivated, arguing that it fails to reflect what officials describe as “real progress”. The foreign ministry and pro-government media have criticised Brussels for “instrumentalising” integration issues and say the tone of the assessment was anticipated. Officials contend that Georgia remains committed to membership and that the reform agenda continues.
Against this backdrop Georgia’s foreign minister, Maka Bochorishvili, claimed that Ukraine showed “negative attitudes” towards Georgia’s EU path in 2022–2023, allegedly campaigning against Tbilisi receiving candidate status. She also defended the government’s refusal to impose sanctions on Russia on security-risk grounds. These statements were paired with criticism of the Commission’s conclusions as “distorting real facts”.
The EU side has repeatedly linked Georgia’s standing to domestic developments since 2024. The debate over a “foreign agents” law—decried by critics as modelled on Russian provisions—triggered mass protests and warnings from Brussels and Washington about the compatibility of such measures with EU standards. Subsequent political turbulence, including contested electoral processes and tighter controls on civil society, accelerated the deterioration flagged by the Commission in 2025.
In its public messaging this week, the EU Delegation in Georgia emphasised that the “door remains open” but underscored that movement now depends on the government delivering corrective steps. Herczyński reiterated that the authorities “know perfectly well” what is required and appealed for a return to the integration track. The Commission’s report lists concrete areas—judicial independence, anti-corruption, human rights protections, media freedom and CFSP alignment—where verifiable improvements are expected.
The political exchange with Kyiv sits uneasily with this technical checklist. Ukraine and Moldova were commended in the same package for advancing reforms under difficult conditions, while still facing stringent scrutiny—particularly on anti-corruption. Kyiv has publicly pressed for an accelerated timetable to the end of the decade, underscoring the contrast in momentum among candidates.
For Georgia, the immediate implications are procedural and reputational. Procedurally, the “candidate in name only” designation signals that the EU will not recommend opening accession negotiations absent a demonstrable course correction. Reputationally, the verdict risks hardening perceptions among member states that Tbilisi is diverging from core EU standards, complicating any effort to regain the initiative in 2026’s review cycle. The ambassador’s characterisation—“devastating” for European aspirations—captures the gravity of that shift.
Unless Tbilisi addresses the specific deficiencies listed in the 2025 report—and de-escalates tensions with independent media, civil society and EU institutions—the enlargement dossier is unlikely to advance. The EU maintains that the path remains open; the conditions for movement are clear; and the next review will evaluate delivery against those benchmarks, not rhetoric.
