European Parliament lawmaker praises Georgia’s election environment

Georgia has a very good election environment, says a European Parliament (EP) lawmaker.

Knut Fleckenstein, Vice President of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) within the EP is in Tbilisi to meet high officials from Georgia’s ruling party Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia (GDDG), and to assess the country’s pre-election environment.

Fleckenstein met GDDG’s Secretary General, Georgia’s Vice Prime Minister Kakha Kaladze earlier this afternoon and discussed the upcoming Parliamentary Elections planned for October 8.

"Today I’m in Georgia for two reasons,” said the German politician at a joint press conference with Kaladze.

"First of all I want to once again offer our support to Georgian Dream because S&D knows very well that your government has done much work to get Georgia closer to the European Union.”

"And on the other hand we are in a country where a really good election environment has been formed.”

Kaladze spoke to his guest about general election preparations and noted Georgia was conducting "the freest and fairest elections in our country's history”.

He added all political groups had equal opportunity to get their ideas to the public, meaning people have an opportunity to freely choose who they wanted to vote for.

The two officials talked about Georgia’s progress towards visa liberalisation with the EU.

Fleckenstein said there was no reason that prevented Georgia from being granted visa liberalisation and "only technical details” concerning a suspension mechanism needed to be more precise before granting a visa-free regime for Georgia, and works were already underway in this direction.

He added that everyone in the EU had agreed that the situation had already maturated for visa liberalisation for Georgia.

"Now it’s up to the EU to fulfil its pledge,” said Fleckenstein.