Commentary
Shorter analyses and assessments on current developments
CDGR researchers publish regular commentary on developments in the region. Commentaries are shorter analytical pieces responding to specific events, policy moments, or public debates.
Current commentary
1 July 2026 · The Gurian Economist
The Balance of Failings: What Georgia’s Balance of Payments Reveals That GDP Never Will
Using Georgia's 2025 balance of payments data, this piece argues that headline GDP and FDI figures obscure a much less flattering picture: a large negative goods balance only partly offset by tourism, with remittances from Georgians working abroad — not investment or exports — effectively financing a fifth of national consumption. Comparative data places Georgia's external imbalance among the worst in its post-socialist peer group, alongside Bosnia and Moldova, while genuinely new foreign investment remains a fraction of the reinvestment and profit repatriation figures typically cited as success stories.
Read the full commentary →30 June 2026 · Zaza Broladze
Big Little Numbers: The Numbers Don’t Believe Lavrov’s Tears
A follow-up to the author's earlier piece on anti-European propaganda narratives, this commentary uses hard data to challenge claims by Lavrov, Kobakhidze, and Papuashvili about EU accession harming Georgian agriculture and wine. Drawing on the export growth of Poland and the Baltic states after EU membership, the Russian embargoes on Georgian and Armenian goods, and a statistical rebuttal of Kobakhidze's GDP claims, the piece argues that the numbers point in the opposite direction from the official narrative.
Read the full commentary →16 June 2026 · Zaza Broladze
Big Little Lies: How Anti-European Narratives Are Manufactured in Georgia
A few days ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared that joining the European Union would result in the complete destruction of Georgia's agricultural sector. A single, straightforward counter-question is enough to dismantle this claim: if this is true, name just one country that actually lost its agricultural sector after joining the European Union. There is no such answer, of course, because this is not a statement of fact. It is a manufactured narrative.
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