Georgia’s Prosperity Score Climbs as Its Freedom Rating Keeps Sliding

Georgia’s prosperity score climbed to 78.2 out of 100 this year, good enough for 43rd place worldwide. Its freedom score slid to 66.6, dropping the country to 73rd among the 171 nations tracked in the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Index 2026. The index reflects conditions through 2025, drawing on three decades of political, legal and economic data.

The Atlantic Council built this year’s global report around one warning, titled the legal foundations that enable prosperity are rapidly eroding. Georgia supplies a case in point. Its weakest score of any category, 43.6 out of 100, falls in clarity of law, the exact terrain the report says determines whether growth holds up over time.

Two Scores Moving in Opposite Directions

Georgia’s freedom score peaked at 76 out of 100 in 2018. Seven years later it has fallen to 66.6, a drop of roughly 9.4 points even as the country’s broader prosperity trend kept climbing.

The index scores 171 countries from 1995 through 2025 on a 0 to 100 scale, with higher numbers marking better performance. Freedom is built from three equally weighted pieces: political freedom, economic freedom and legal freedom. Prosperity blends six measures: income, healthcare, income equality, environment, opportunities for minorities and education.

Georgia’s prosperity path has generally climbed over three decades, though unevenly, according to the report. This year’s rise to 78.2 lands the country just inside the top quarter of all 171 nations measured. Its freedom rank of 73rd sits lower, though still inside the better half of the field.

Why Is Georgia’s Freedom Score Still Falling?

Georgia’s freedom score is falling because its legal institutions are its weakest link, according to the Atlantic Council. Clarity of law, court independence, property rights, limits on executive power, corruption control and security all scored below 59 out of 100 in the 2026 index, dragging down a country that still scores well on income and education.

Those six categories sit inside the index’s legal and political pillars, and none of them are abstractions. Georgian lawmakers spent the past two years expanding a Russian-style foreign agents law now binding Georgian organizations, then broadened it again in March 2026 to cover in-kind foreign support alongside cash grants.

A separate report on democratic backsliding commissioned through the OSCE documented violence against protesters, journalists and opposition figures, with investigators describing a pattern of “near-total impunity for perpetrators.”

A separate ranking system reaches a similar conclusion. The Heritage Foundation’s 2026 Economic Freedom Index found Georgia’s property rights score dropping from 62.3 to 53, even as the country retains the most favorable business climate in Eurasia.

A Reform Poster Child’s Long Slide

Georgia was not always a cautionary tale. After the 2003 Rose Revolution, President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government slashed red tape and cracked down on petty corruption, vaulting the country up the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings and drawing praise from development economists worldwide. One of those economists has been watching the index numbers ever since.

In 2005, Georgia was the most prominent candidate to support the theory that reforms can bring long-term economic growth.

Colin Buckley, a senior researcher at the Atlantic Council who headed the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Georgia office from 2005 to 2009, said that during a discussion marking the index’s publication. He pointed to Georgia’s climb up the Doing Business rankings and the growth that followed.

That momentum did not survive a change of government. Bidzina Ivanishvili made his fortune in Russia, then founded the Georgian Dream party and swept the 2012 parliamentary election. He has held no formal office for most of the years since. Western officials and independent researchers describe him as the country’s de facto ruler regardless.

The reform focus narrowed after that, Buckley said. “While Georgia focused on individual trade freedoms and aspects of investor-friendly legislation, it overlooked broader political freedom and perhaps aspects of economic freedom that have more domestic effects,” he said.

The slide accelerated hard last year. In the 2025 edition of the index, which measured 164 countries before this year’s expansion to 171, Georgia’s freedom ranking fell 22 spots, the sharpest drop of any country that year, with its prosperity score slipping in tandem. This year’s numbers show prosperity recovering while freedom keeps sliding.

Georgia Keeps Company with Fragile Democracies

Georgia is not sliding alone. The Atlantic Council groups it among nations with declining freedom dynamics, a list that includes some unexpected names.

• United States – grouped with Georgia despite being one of the world’s largest economies.
• Ecuador – named in the same category of declining freedom dynamics this year.
• Sierra Leone – also listed among the current cycle’s decliners.
• Tanzania – included in the same declining group.
• Haiti – doubly flagged, among both the declining freedom group and the world’s lowest prosperity scores.

Courts, checks on power and legal clarity are eroding across this group, even in countries whose economies keep growing.

Georgia’s neighbors in the rankings include two names with far greater geopolitical weight. China placed 147th in freedom and was classified as a low-prosperity economy, while Russia ranked 154th in freedom and landed in the moderate-prosperity tier, the same broad category as Georgia itself.

Sitting between Moscow and Brussels on the map keeps Georgia diplomatically stretched, visible each year in independence day celebrations split three ways between competing allies.

Investors Still Wait for Rule of Law First

Buckley’s comments were not really about Georgia. He was discussing Ukraine’s reconstruction, telling the same audience that investors will need a strong rule of law framework before they commit significant private capital there. The logic travels well.

Georgia is testing it in reverse. The country’s own path toward the European Union has been frozen since November 2024, when Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced accession talks would pause until 2028. The European Commission has said it cannot recommend opening accession negotiations unless Georgia reverses course. Brussels narrowed everyday ties too, suspending visa-free travel for Georgian diplomatic and service passport holders in March 2026 over the same accession commitments.

The European Parliament went further. In a resolution adopted 436 to 145 with 47 abstentions, lawmakers cited Georgia’s imprisonment of Sakharov Prize laureate Mzia Amaglobeli and urged coordinated EU sanctions against those responsible for repression and state capture. “This is unacceptable for an EU candidate country,” said Rasa Juknevičienė, the Lithuanian lawmaker who led the resolution.

Amaglobeli is one name among many. This year’s US defense policy bill folded in amendments naming Georgia’s jailed political prisoners, a sign that the country’s legal troubles have moved from research indexes onto the desks of American lawmakers.

None of that has slowed Georgia’s economy on paper. Income, health and education scores keep feeding a prosperity number that has climbed for three decades. The Atlantic Council’s researchers say that pattern rarely lasts once legal institutions give way, and Georgia’s clarity of law score, still the country’s weakest number on the entire index, is the one they are watching most closely.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Index?

It is an annual project from the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center that scores countries on a 0 to 100 scale across freedom and prosperity, using data stretching back to 1995. The 2026 edition expanded coverage to 171 countries, adding seven new entries including the Central African Republic, Eswatini, Fiji, the Maldives, the Solomon Islands, Somalia and Timor-Leste.

Why Is Georgia’s Freedom Score Falling While Its Prosperity Score Rises?

Georgia’s prosperity components, such as income, health and education, have grown for years, while its legal and political scores keep falling. The United States has sanctioned four Georgian judges for corruption and abuses of power, one sign of how deep the legal erosion cited by the index runs beneath the country’s economic gains.

Is Georgia Still on Track to Join the European Union?

Officially, yes. Practically, talks are frozen until 2028 at the government’s own request, and the European Commission has described Georgia as a candidate country in name only, reflecting how far accession has stalled since Georgia won candidate status in December 2023.

How Does Georgia’s Freedom Score Compare with Its Neighbors?

On a separate ranking, the Heritage Foundation’s 2026 Index of Economic Freedom gave Georgia’s South Caucasus neighbors relatively good marks too, with Armenia placing 52nd overall and Azerbaijan 67th, though Georgia still topped both regionally at 35th on that index.

What Would It Take for Georgia’s Score to Recover?

The report’s authors point to legal institutions as the guardrails that normally contain political backsliding and preserve the conditions prosperity needs. Rebuilding court independence, property protections and limits on executive power would matter more to Georgia’s trajectory than any single trade policy or investment incentive.