Georgia's President Salome Zurabishvili has refused to sign into law a controversial bill denounced by rights groups and Brussels as curbing the rights of LGBTQ people, officials said Wednesday.
The ruling Georgian Dream party approved the measures - dubbed the "family values" bill - last month, in a vote boycotted by the opposition and that fuelled tensions ahead of crucial October 26 parliamentary elections.
"President Zurabishvili refused to sign the bill and returned to parliament without vetoing it," presidency spokeswoman Marika Bochoidze, told AFP.
It is widely expected to be signed into law by the parliament's speaker and its co-sponsor Shalva Papuashvili.
The measure mirrors legislation used in Russia to curb LGBTQ rights and "concerns restricting, in educational institutions and TV broadcasts, the propaganda of same-sex relationships and incest."
It would ban gender transition, and adoption by gay and transgender people, and nullify same-sex marriages performed abroad.
Rights groups have also slammed language that puts homosexual relations on a par with incest.
Papuashvili said the measures are aimed at "strengthening mechanisms for the protection of minors and family values that are based on the union of a woman and a man."
The pro-EU Zurabishvili, who holds limited powers in the country's political system, has become increasingly at loggerheads with the Georgian Dream party in recent years.
This bill came after Tbilisi's recent adoption of an anti-NGO "foreign influence" law, which triggered weeks of mass anti-government protests and Western condemnation.
Brussels has repeatedly warned Georgia is drifting from its stated ambition of joining the EU with laws that run against European values.
Last month it said the proposed bill "undermines fundamental rights of Georgians and risks further stigmatisation and discrimination of part of the population".
Adopting the measures would have "important repercussions" on EU-hopeful Tbilisi's European integration path and "place further strain on EU-Georgia relations," the EU added.