From Georgia to Turkey, Hungary and Republika Srpska, governments have increasingly been trying to target ‘foreign influences’ – putting forward legislation that critics claim is intended to prevent public scrutiny and curb media freedom.
“Those authoritarian regimes want to make these foreign agent laws to control media,” Mogens Blicher Bjerregard, a veteran Danish journalist and chair of the executive board of the ECPMF, told BIRN in Brussels.
According to human rights group Human Rights Watch, ‘foreign agent’ laws have become a preferred instrument for authoritarians to strengthen their hold on power. They are used to discredit critical voices by “equating them with promoting the interests of a foreign power”.
Democratic backsliding
Billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party addresses a pre-election rally in Tbilisi, 23 October 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/DAVID MDZINARISHVILI
While the United States has had a Foreign Agents Registration Act since 1938, requiring people lobbying or advocating for foreign powers to register, the model being emulated by countries like Georgia was developed in Russia much more recently, and is specifically used to muzzle dissent.
First enacted in 2012, the Russian law essentially requires any person or organisation receiving any form of financial support from outside the country to be declared a ‘foreign agent’ – a designation that has highly toxic connotations, dating back to the Soviet era – and to be subjected to additional controls, checks and regulations.
This idea has appealed to other governments who have been accused of democratic backsliding and are seeking to evade scrutiny – like the regime in Georgia, a country that was once seen as a bright example of democratic progress among post-Soviet countries.
“The government’s decisions that have been made in the last years have pointed a U-turn in the foreign policy vector. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, our government’s intention to forge closer ties with Russia, China and other autocratic regimes has become crystal clear,” Lia Chakhunashvili, executive director of the Georgian Chapter of Journalistic Ethics, told BIRN at the Media Freedom Rapid Response Summit.
Georgia’s ‘transparency of foreign influence’ law came into force was passed in June despite the mass protests against it.
“I believe that the government saw the law as an opportunity to silence critical voices, from corruption watchdogs to service providers, from community radios to investigative media, once and for good,” Chakhunashvili said.
The EU, which had granted Georgia membership candidate status in December 2023, froze the accession process in reaction to the adopted of the legislation. But the Georgian government insists that transparency about foreign funding for NGOs and media is necessary, so the public knows who is financing and influencing who.
Chakhunashvili explained that the government is targeting all NGOs, including privately-owned media outlets, which receive over 20 per cent of their funding from foreign sources. Many have said they will refuse to register in protest – but those that do not face punitive fines that could cripple them.
“If they decide to implement the law as written, some NGOs will be forced to self-liquidate and others will have to declare themselves insolvent,” she said.
In a relatively poor country, many non-government-backed or independent media rely on foreign grants for survival. If they are forced out of business, Chakhunashvili predicted, “the population will be left without reliable information coming from independent and critical media.”
She also warned that if oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili’s ruling Georgian Dream party wins this weekend’s election, “the law will be a highly potent instrument that will help the government diverging the country from its Euro-Atlantic perspective to the Kremlin’s orbit”.
Escalating pressure
Georgia is the most prominent case because of the mass protests against the ‘foreign influence’ law, which continued despite a police crackdown on demonstrators on the main street of the capital, attracting international media coverage. But strongman leaders in other countries have, less dramatically, pursued similar initiatives.
In December 2023, Hungary’s parliament passed a package of ‘sovereignty protection’ laws to curb foreign influence, which critics said could be used by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to target dissenters.
Orban’s Fidesz party argued that the laws were necessary to stop opposition parties receiving foreign funding. They include the creation of a ‘sovereignty protection office’, a government authority that can gather information about people or organisations that receive money from outside Hungary.
The European Commission announced this month that it is taking Hungary to the EU’s Court of Justice, arguing that the ‘sovereignty protection’ laws breach some of the bloc’s fundamental rights and freedoms.
“The broad powers and discretion of the [sovereignty protection] office will affect a wide range of persons and entities, including civil society organisations, media outlets and journalists in a disproportionate manner,” it said.
In another EU member state, Bulgaria, pro-Russian right-wing party Revival has pushed for a ‘foreign agents’ law that would effectively sanction certain NGOs and media outlets that are funded from abroad, but without success so far. However, Revival’s rising popularity ahead of Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections on Sunday has increased concerns that the party might try again if it gains more representation in parliament.
A similar law was also proposed in Republika Srpska, the Serb-led entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, sparking criticism that it would limit freedom of expression. The legislation was intended to restrict non-profit organisations from engaging in “political activities”, mandate their enrolment in a special registry and subject them to increased legal oversight. Under the law, the Republika Srpska government could declare them “agents of foreign influence”.
However, the law was then withdrawn in May, citing the need for further harmonisation with European standards, although this was not clearly explained.
Meanwhile, the EU has also been considering whether to adopt a ‘foreign agents directive’ to address political interference by countries like Russia intended to subvert democracy in Europe. Civil rights organisations were highly critical of the idea, arguing that it could curb freedom of speech and undermine the EU’s credibility as a champion of democratic values.
“Ironically, this directive it was made to control third-party influence, specifically Russian influence, but when you read the directive and some of the requirements, it is very similar to the law that was proposed in [Republika Srpska],” Ena Bavcic, lead researcher at BIRN’s Digital Rights Programme, said at the Media Freedom Rapid Response Summit.
A similar law was put on the parliamentary agenda for discussion in Turkey in May. The planned ‘agents of foreign influence’ law threatened prison sentences for people involved in producing propaganda for a foreign actor. This would represent a further blow to the freedom of the country’s embattled media, as well as to civil society in general, experts argue.
“It is clear that the pressure targeting media and civil society in Turkey has been escalating for over a decade. The survival of these sectors has been under severe threat for a long time,” Gurkan Ozturan, media freedom monitoring officer at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, told BIRN.
The law was withdrawn following criticism, but then submitted to parliament again on October 18. This time, however, the proposal is back on the parliamentary agenda as part of a different legislative package.
“The unofficially labelled ‘agents of foreign influence’ law is now being taken into a legislative framework to officially criminalise the works of independent journalists or CSOs [civil society organisations] whenever they reveal major wrongs in society or governance,” Ozturan said.
“It will restrict the independent media and civil society even further, which is a very risky move when we consider it in the context of the wider process of democratisation,” he added.
Mark Dempsey, senior EU advocacy officer at UK-based media freedom organisation Article 19, said that some European parliamentarians have indulged illiberal tendencies among member states. He gave the example of Hungary and how it was tolerated by the powerful centre-right European People’s Party, EPP bloc in the European parliament when democratic backsliding started under Orban’s government in Budapest.
“I think we have a weak leadership at the centre of Europe. We have a parliament leaning to the right and we have an EPP party which has a history, in order to secure its power base and its numbers in the parliament, of allowing this gradual backsliding,” Dempsey told BIRN.
But in the long run, the adoption of laws labelling NGOs and independent media ‘foreign agents’ can damage EU aspirant countries’ hopes of joining the European bloc – as the example of Georgia has highlighted.
Campaign groups in these countries should do more to highlight what this means for the future, Dempsey urged: “I think in accession countries, there has to be mobilising on the ground among civil society organisations about what a future in Europe means versus what a future outside of Europe means.”