The party that governs Georgia with pro-Russian overtones, Georgian Dream, announced on Thursday the withdrawal of a controversial law on “foreign agents” that has sparked major protests in the Caucasian country.

“As a government party responsible to every member of society, we have decided to unconditionally withdraw this law that we supported,” the Georgian Dream party said in a statement on its website.

The bill would have required Georgian organizations that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents” or face fines. Georgian Dream, founded in 2012 by billionaire businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili, had previously said the law was needed to unmask critics of the Georgian Orthodox Church, one of the country’s most powerful institutions.

Opposition to the bill, including Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who said she would veto it if it passed through her office, compared it to a 2012 Russian law, which has been used to suppress dissent. The Georgia government says the legislation is based on US foreign agent laws, in place since the 1930s.

Be that as it may, the movement that has taken to the streets -more pro-European than its government-, and which has already been compared to the Ukrainian Maidan that overthrew the pro-Russian executive in 2014, has already announced that it will continue with the protests despite the announcement of the Georgian Dream Government.