Foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp has called on Georgia’s government to investigate claims of voter fraud at last weekend’s parliamentary elections in order to stay on course to join the European Union.

Thousands of Georgians took to the streets of the capital,Tbilisi, on Monday evening to demonstrate against what the country’s president, Salome Zourabichvili, called a “Russian special operation”.

Official results gave the pro-Russian Georgian Dream, the largest party in parliament, 54% of the vote, but exit polls had pointed to a narrow win for the opposition parties.

Veldkamp said Georgian authorities must co-operate with international observers who highlighted “considerable irregularities” with the vote.

The Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) said the campaign had been “marred by an uneven playing field”, but stopped short of declaring the result invalid.

Democratic principles

“I call on the Georgian authorities to address the concerns of the OSCE observers,” Veldkamp wrote on social media site X, better known as Twitter.

“The next government must return to democratic principles if it wants to keep its promise to bring Georgia closer to the EU.”

Together with 12 EU Ministers I condemn the substantial irregularities in Georgia’s elections and demand an impartial inquiry of the complaints and remedy of the violations established.https://t.co/gE1ndKPBSn

— Caspar Veldkamp (@ministerBZ) October 28, 2024

Georgia gained candidate status last December, but the conservative Georgian Dream, founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, has steered the country down a pro-Russian path since winning the general election in 2016.

Last month the Netherlands and other countries condemned a law passed by parliament that discriminated against the LGBT community by banning Pride parades, rainbow flags, and films and literature featuring homosexuality.

In May parliament passed a Russian-style law allowing it to label western-backed media organisations and NGOs as “foreign agents”, accusing them of promoting “LGBT propaganda”.

Georgia has agreed to a partial recount of votes in 14% of precincts to address “irregularities”, but prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze has rejected claims that the vote was rigged.

He told the BBC that there had been incidents in a “handful of precincts” but the election had mostly passed off peacefully, adding: “Irregularities happen everywhere, in every country,”