Georgia turns away from Europe: Examining the dead-end in EU policy

Georgia used to be one of the best partners for the EU in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative, and the country was granted EU candidate status in December 2023. Presently, however, the relationship is effectively frozen. In the wake of the manipulated parliamentary elections in October 2024, the authoritarian drift in Georgia has accelerated to such a degree that Georgia wasn’t invited to the EU Enlargement Summit in November 2025. This policy brief analyses the erosion of Georgia’s European orientation and suggests ways out of the current impasse. While the drivers for this erosion are primarily domestic, the EU needs to strategically rethink the aims of its policy in order to sustain the EaP enterprise.