Georgian Dream tightened Parliament’s media accreditation rules weeks after the European Parliament banned a pro-government broadcaster. Then it turned those same rules on the journalists who ask its own lawmakers hard questions. Transparency International Georgia (TI Georgia, a Tbilisi-based anti-corruption watchdog) says about 15 representatives of critical outlets have lost parliamentary accreditation or had their access restricted since late May.
The tightening traces to a trigger in Brussels, where the European Union’s legislature had just banned a broadcaster loyal to the ruling party for a year. What followed inside Georgia’s own Parliament hit independent reporters far harder than it ever touched the broadcaster the ban was aimed at.
TI Georgia Counts 15 Journalists Hit in Two Months
TI Georgia laid out its findings in a statement published July 27, saying the pattern has accelerated since late May. The watchdog counted four separate suspensions at two broadcasters, accreditation revocations at two more outlets, and at least one journalist turned away at the door.
| Journalist | Outlet | Accreditation Penalty |
|---|---|---|
| Natalia Kajaia | TV Pirveli | One-year suspension |
| Maka Chikhladze | TV Pirveli | Six-month suspension |
| Nini Balanchivadze | Formula TV | Six-month suspension |
| Maka Andronikashvili | TV Pirveli | One-month suspension |
| Staff journalists | Publika and Monitori | Accreditation revoked in May |
| Mindia Gabadze | Publika | Denied a one-time pass in June |
TI Georgia said the accreditation system, introduced in 2023 and tightened again this year, has become a way to penalize outlets least willing to go along with the ruling party’s line. The organization says the pattern is now broad enough, and repetitive enough, to describe as policy rather than isolated incidents.
A Ban in Brussels Set Off Tbilisi’s Crackdown
The chain of events began far from Tbilisi, inside the European Parliament’s Brussels headquarters. On May 13, Imedi TV, a broadcaster generally supportive of Georgian Dream, said the European Parliament had suspended its accreditation and filming permits for a year. The European Parliament also barred two other pro-government channels, Rustavi 2 and Pos TV, from its Brussels premises for at least twelve months.
The bans followed a specific incident. An Imedi crew filmed Lithuanian member of the European Parliament Rasa Jukneviciene without her consent on May 6 and aired the footage four days later. The channel had already received a warning in April over a similar incident in March.
Georgian officials called the European Parliament’s move an attack on press freedom. Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili accused the European Parliament of trying to ‘silence free media,’ and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze criticized the decision publicly in the days that followed.
Three weeks later, Papuashvili struck a different note. On June 8, he announced that Parliament’s own accreditation system would change, saying he had studied the European Parliament’s practices and found ‘certain elements’ of them ‘interesting’ enough to bring to Tbilisi. He went further, saying Georgia’s version would end up ‘more advanced’ than the European Parliament’s own. TI Georgia said Georgian Dream amended the accreditation rules shortly after that announcement, formalizing a stricter system this past June.
How Long Can Parliament Suspend a Journalist Now?
Parliament’s tightened rules set three tiers of punishment for journalists accused of violating conduct rules during sessions. A first offense now costs a reporter one month of access. A repeat offense can cost a full year, twice the previous ceiling. And for the first time, Parliament can strip an entire outlet’s credentials at once instead of just one reporter’s.
- First violation: a one-month suspension of the journalist’s individual accreditation.
- Repeated violations: suspension can now reach one year, up from a six-month cap under the prior rules.
- Outlet-wide penalty: Parliament may revoke an entire media outlet’s accreditation rather than a single journalist’s, depending on the severity and frequency of the alleged violations.
The individual suspensions TI Georgia cited span that entire ladder, from a single month to a full year, suggesting Parliament has already tested every rung of it in practice.
From Meladze’s Saturday to a Denied Pass
Three of the four suspended journalists, Kajaia, Chikhladze and Andronikashvili, work on the same TV Pirveli investigative program, Meladze’s Saturday, according to the channel’s news leadership. All three lost their accreditation within days of each other in late June.
Formula TV’s Nini Balanchivadze received a six-month suspension over the same stretch. Parliament revoked the accreditation of journalists from Publika and Monitori entirely in May, before the tightened rules had even taken effect, suggesting the pressure predates the formal rule change TI Georgia is now protesting.
Publika reporter Mindia Gabadze faced a narrower version of the same barrier in June. Parliament denied him a one-time press pass to cover Prime Minister Kobakhidze’s address to the chamber, even though he held no standing accreditation to lose in the first place.
Parliament’s Doors Have Been Closing Since 2023
Parliament’s accreditation system is not new. It dates to 2023, the same year TI Georgia first warned that the legislature was sliding toward becoming a closed institution, limiting reporters’ access to lawmakers and committee sessions.
The restrictions widened in November 2024, when Parliament barred non-broadcast reporters from entering the building at all, limiting entry to two crews per broadcaster and confining them to a designated area with no live broadcasting, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ, a press freedom group).
The access fight lines up with a broader slide in Georgia’s international press freedom standing.
- 135th of 180 nations and territories in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
- Down 21 places from 114th a year earlier, one of the sharper single-year drops RSF recorded worldwide this cycle.
- Down 75 places since 2019 to 2021, when Georgia held its best-ever ranking of 60th.
RSF’s own country profile tracking Georgia’s press freedom ranking points to the political crisis following the disputed October 2024 parliamentary election as the backdrop for the decline, warning it raises the risk of political control over media more broadly.
Georgian Dream Calls It ‘Following Europe’s Lead’
TI Georgia rejects the comparison to Brussels. The watchdog argues Georgian Dream has leaned on state institutions to silence independent media and sidestep public accountability rather than open itself up to scrutiny.
Public officials must remember that they are funded by taxpayers and are accountable to citizens, including by answering even the most difficult and critical questions.
TI Georgia said in its July 27 statement.
The pressure on Georgian media extends beyond Parliament’s front door. In February, CPJ urged lawmakers to reject draft amendments adding lengthy jail terms for media funding violations, part of the same legislative stretch that later produced the accreditation overhaul. The same period also brought a foreign agents statute, a law modeled on Russian legislation reshaping funding rules for Georgian civil society groups and outlets alike.
TI Georgia itself has not escaped the same pressure it now documents in others. The watchdog fought a separate dispute over its election observer status earlier this year.
TI Georgia says that makes parliamentary floor access harder to replace than it looks. Georgian Dream officials routinely decline interviews with critical outlets through any other channel, leaving the chamber as one of the few remaining rooms where they cannot simply refuse to answer.
