Viktor Orbán will visit Georgia today to mark the victory of the authoritarian Georgian Dream party in the country’s domestic election, despite widespread concerns of “intimidation of voters inside and outside of polling stations”. His arrival in Tbilisi has prompted one veteran EU politician to accuse him of “working for Moscow”.
Leading EU and US voices, including Antony Blinken and the European Commission, have called for investigations of the electoral process, that saw the party founded by a Putin sympathiser win.
Hungarian prime minister Orbán, who in July visited Putin – a move met with anger in Brussels – declared the result an “overwhelming victory” for the Georgian Dream.
Orbán’s decision to fly to Tbilisi is made all the more irksome to EU officials, given Hungary holds the rotating EU presidency.
Orbán “does not represent the European Union” during his visit, Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, told Spanish public radio on 28 October.
“The union’s rotating president has no authority in foreign policy,” he said.
A statement from Borrell and the European Commission read: “We call on the Central Election Commission of Georgia and other relevant authorities to fulfill their duty to swiftly, transparently and independently investigate and adjudicate electoral irregularities and allegations thereof.”
Georgia’s president, Salome Zourabichvili, who wants her country to join the European Union, claimed she did not recognise the result of the vote and dubbed the process a “Russian special operation”.
Observers of the election from the EU claimed it came across an incident of ballot stuffing, plus “physical assault on observers attempting to report on violations, observer and media removal from polling stations, tearing up of observer complaints, intimidation of voters inside and outside of polling stations, presence of multiple party-affiliated observers posing as citizen observers”.
The former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt took to X, and said: “As Georgia is channelled towards Moscow with Kremlin interference, Viktor Orbán flies to Tbilisi to endorse a corrupted election. An EU leader now openly working for Moscow & Europe’s democrats sit idle! First step..finally remove Orbán’s EU voting rights.”
