Georgia’s parliament has approved the first reading of a draft bill on registering foreign agents that’s modeled directly after the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the outlet Tabula reported on Tuesday.
Archil Gorduladze, a member of the ruling Georgian Dream party and the lawmaker who introduced the bill, described it as a “detailed translation of the American law.” According to him, the Georgian version will apply only to online entities, unlike the U.S. law, which covers individuals as well.
An explanatory note attached to the bill, published on February 24, 2025, stated that the law on foreign influence adopted in May 2024 “does not sufficiently ensure” the goal of transparency, specifically because most non-profits receiving foreign funding prefer not to register and to face penalties instead. As a result, the current law “cannot effectively implement the will of the legislature,” the note says.
Mamuka Mdinaradze, another member of Georgian Dream, said that last year the parliament “adopted a simplified version of FARA, which has not been fully implemented,” and that now “we will adopt a new, American law, a direct copy of its current version, and ensure its full implementation.”
Georgian media noted that the proposed bill is an almost exact copy of the U.S. law — down to translations of terms that have no equivalents in the Georgian context, such as “Congress,” “Library of Congress,” and “State Department.” Lawmakers have said the discrepancies will be corrected.
Georgia’s previous bill on “foreign agents,” which is more restrictive than FARA, was introduced to parliament twice. The first time, it was withdrawn following mass protests, but in the spring of 2024, it was passed despite a veto by then-President Salome Zourabichvili, who refused to sign it, calling the law “Russian in its essence and spirit.” The law provides for the creation of a special registry listing all non-profit legal entities and media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad.
