Too Little, Too Late? Mismatches Between EU Policy and Pro-EU Civil Society Actors’ Expectations in Georgia and Armenia

Recent years have seen dramatic changes in Armenia and Georgia with regards to both their domestic political evolution and their geostrategic orientation. Armenia’s 2018 Velvet revolution and the rise of Nikol Pashinyan opened the door for a sustainable democratic transition. Following the 2023 loss of Nagorno Karabakh, the country also declared its ambition to reduce its dependence on and cooperation with Russia, and started to toy with the idea of joining Euro-Atlantic institutions. In contrast, Georgia has seen a democratic regression that peaked in 2024 with the passing of a Russia-style foreign agent law and a rigged parliamentary election. Moreover, the Georgian Dream-led government began to move away from Georgia’s long-standing Euro-Atlantic ambitions and to adopt an increasingly pro-Russian stance. These developments have significantly influenced the EU’s policy to both countries. Having overlooked democratic backsliding in Georgia and even awarded the country candidate status in November 2023, the EU adopted a much more forceful position over the course of 2024. In parallel, the EU started to increasingly support and engage with Armenia – after relations had been on the back burner ever since the country’s 2013 decision not to sign an Association Agreement and join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union instead. Against that backdrop, this paper explores pro-EU civil society actors’ perspectives on and expectations towards European Union policy towards these two South Caucasian countries. Armenian and Georgian pro-EU civil society actors are a natural ally in the EU’s quest to promote liberal and democratic principles and a Euro-Atlantic geopolitical orientation within these countries. However, while sharing the EU’s objectives, they have been very critical of and disenchanted with the EU’s approach to achieving them. Drawing upon two months of fieldwork in Armenia and three months of fieldwork in Georgia over the course of 2024, the paper explores the roots of this mismatch and the challenges it creates for EU democracy promotion.