The paper discusses the dynamics of the ongoing authoritarian turn in Georgia. It focuses on how European integration – never contested by any government in independent Georgia – became the major subject of political and media polarization after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was in this period that the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party’s rhetoric towards the EU shifted from defensive to offensive, further escalating after the introduction of the so-called “foreign agents” law (2023), when GD started depicting Western liberal values as a threat to Georgia’s sovereignty, as well as the re-introduction of this law the following year (2024), when GD started widely circulating the so-called "global war party" discourse. A new stage of the authoritarian consolidation began in November 2024, when the ruling party declared the suspension of European integration, which triggered a continuous pro-European and anti-regime protest in Georgia. Despite GD’s extensive repressions against protesters using physical and legal measures alongside a massive propaganda machinery, the protest is ongoing and the ruling party is under both domestic and international pressure: Daily protests increasingly contribute to GD’s domestic delegitimization, while the growing international isolation represents a true challenge to the small and poor country’s authoritarian regime.
