2025-04-28 10:59:35
Author
Anna Russell
When the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the event was predicted to have a huge impact – not only on the EU itself, but also on the countries in its Eastern neighbourhood, including Georgia. It was expected that the EU would lose both a ‘vocal supporter’ of Georgia (Jorjoliani 2016), as well as a proponent of taking a ‘hard line on Russia’ (Nicolescu 2018, 107). However, the UK would also gain an opportunity to develop its own stronger bilateral relations with Georgia outside of the EU framework.
Brexit fully came into effect at the end of January 2020, four years after the referendum vote. With a new trade agreement put in place in 2019, new opportunities for UK-Georgia relations seemed possible. Yet the impact of Brexit has seemingly been overshadowed by a recent downward turn in the countries’ relationship, with the UK’s foreign secretary having announced the suspension of programme support to the Georgian government at the end of last year, as well as a package of sanctions against Georgian officials (HM Government 2024a). Combined with the general changes in the architecture of Euro-Atlantic security following Trump’s return to the US presidency, the UK’s position in this region, and with regards to Georgia, has the potential to considerably change.
This policy memo aims to analyse the UK’s relationship with Georgia since Brexit by looking at three different periods: the four years immediately following the Brexit vote, the period from 2020-2024 when Brexit had fully come into effect, and lastly the period from the 2024 UK elections up to the present day. By taking a closer look at UK-Georgia relations over nearly a decade, this paper will seek to better understand how the two countries’ relationship has progressed since the Brexit referendum, and how it could develop in future.
