European solutions for shadow oligarchic rule in Europe’s East: Do they work? The case of Georgia

Abstract

This article looks at the EU’s intervention as the mediator in a domestic political stand-off in Georgia, triggered by the parliamentary elections of 2020. Believing the results of the elections to be fraudulent, the parliamentary opposition rejected them. European Council President Charles Michel then stepped in, initiating a mediation process between the government and the opposition in 2021 and securing a political agreement intended to end the crisis. Analysing the relevant geopolitical and policy framework for this intervention, and its successes and failures, presents fertile ground for understanding the EU as the foreign-policy actor in its neighbourhood and the implications of such a role for the Eastern Partnership initiative. This article argues that while the EU’s active leverage model for supporting democracy was applied in the case of Georgia, the shortcomings and miscalculations of the premises on which the policy model was built limited its success.