The Georgian Parliament is starting consideration of foreign agents bills today.
The draft laws entitled "On the transparency of foreign influence" and "On the registration of foreign agents" will be discussed today, at the joint meeting of the Foreign Relations and Defense and Security Committees of the Parliament.
In February, People's Power, a group allied with the ruling Georgian Dream party and consisting of former ruling party MPs, put forward the bill on "transparency of foreign influence." If it becomes law, it will force Georgia's many foreign-funded non-governmental entities and media outlets to register as "foreign influence agents" and declare their revenues, or face substantial fines.
It is the U.S. where People's Power claims to have got its inspiration for the bill, despite the repeated denial by the State Department that the bill is analogous to the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Georgian Dream leaders said they would be passing both bills in the first hearing, and then ask the Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe, for an expedited assessment of both. The final decision on which of these bills is to pass will be taken based on those assessments, the party claims.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili pledged to veto the bill.
