On April 3, the parliamentary majority leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Mamuka Mdinaradze, announced the reintroduction of the draft law on foreign agents, which was dropped last year after the massive rallies on March 7-9, APA reports citing Civil Georgia.
According to Mdinaradze, the content of the bill remains the same, the only change is in the title: the word “agent” in it has been removed and the title has been replaced with “Organization Carrying Out the Interests of a Foreign Power”.
“The parliamentary majority, after consultation with the political council of the party, has decided to reintroduce the draft law “On Transparency of Foreign Influence” to the Parliament. The bill will be introduced in the Parliament of Georgia with exactly the same text as it was introduced last year, with only one difference. You all remember that last year we introduced the bill and immediately after the introduction we expressed our readiness to replace the term “agent of foreign influence” with another term. In the draft law we are introducing today, the term “organization carrying the interests of a foreign power” will be used instead of the term “agent of foreign influence”,” – stated Mdinaradze during his press briefing.
Mdinaradze reiterated the GD party’s narrative from last year, claiming that the bill only requires organizations that receive foreign funding to publish their own annual financial report, with only financial penalties for violations.
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