MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. The bill on foreign agents being considered in Georgia, opposed by the country's President Salome Zourabichvili, the opposition and Western diplomats, is much milder than in many other countries, including the United States, France and Poland, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Sputnik, Govorit Moskva and Komsomolskaya Pravda radio stations.
"In Georgia now, all these demonstrations have turned Salome Zourabichvili into a fighter for freedom of speech, even though the law is the mildest. In the United States itself, in France, in Poland, and in many other countries, there are laws envisaging fines and criminal punishment, if you receive money and keep quiet about it and do something wrong with this money," Lavrov said.
He stressed that the Georgian bill on foreign agents suggested only the need to declare funds, if the organization in question received more than 20% of its funding from abroad.
On Wednesday, the Georgian parliament approved in the first reading a bill on foreign agents. It was opposed by Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, the opposition and Western diplomats, who saw it as an obstacle to the country's integration into the European Union. Since the beginning of this week, the opposition and civil activists have been holding rallies against the bill in Tbilisi. Protests sometimes turn into clashes with police. The police have detained some protesters.
The ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party announced in early April that it had decided to reintroduce the bill On the Transparency of Foreign Influence to parliament. This happened a year after a similar initiative triggered mass protests, forcing the authorities to abandon the bill. Its text remains identical to last year’s, except for the term "agent of foreign influence." Instead, the term "organization promoting the interests of a foreign power" is used.