Foreign Minister denies information about removal of the Article 49 from the EU-Georgia declaration

On the eve of the Vilnius Summit, Radio Liberty reported that the final draft of the Declarationbetween Georgia and EU does not include the Article 49 which grants any European state the ability to apply to the EU for membership if it respects the fundamental values of the union.

According to Radio Liberty, this article was mentioned in the previous drafts of the declarations and it is important in both, legal and symbolic terms.

In the previous drafts of the declarations, there was indicated that eastern partner countries could continue the aspiration for European Union according to the article 49 of EU declaration. However, in the last version of the document, this article is not even mentioned. "The participants of Vilnius Summit once again confirm that they recognize European aspirations and choice of some partner countries, as well as their strong position to build deep and sustainable democracy, the new draft declaration reads instead, - Radio Liberty reports. Consequently, the media outlet argues that the new version of the project could rarely encourage the six post-Soviet countries, taking part in the Eastern Partnership Program, on their way of rapprochement with Brussels.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia Maia Panjikidze said that the issue of Article 49 has never been discussed with Eastern Partnership countries. Moreover, according to the minister, this article has not been discussed in any of the declarations agreed so far.

"The Article 49 of the EU agreement envisages opening the European perspective to those countries which will fulfill the membership criteria and will have desire to join the EU. This article has never been discussed with Eastern Partnership countries since the association agreement does not mean membership. This is just a mechanism of getting too close to it. Consequently, no single declaration agreed during the previous years in Prague and Warsaw, the Article 49 was not mentioned and this is not included also in association agreement, - Panjikidze explained. Adding she underlines Georgias wish during every next speech in this sense in order to make clear its aspirations.

"I hope that after going through certain stages, it will not be atopic for Georgia and our country will join the EU one fine day, she added.

As Georgias former ambassador to France, MamukaKudava pointed out during yesterday live at Maestro TV, the issue was also current when EU was initialing the association agreement with Ukraine.

Because, there are countries in the EU which are less interested in enlargement. Thats why Ukraine also had to face this problem whether to include or not to include Kievs aspirations regarding EU membership in the text of the declaration. So, if there was a text including this article in the text and it was removed with lobbing of some countries then, it is clearly unfavorable for Georgia. However, there could be a second option, maybe the text existed without that article and it is possible that something will change in favor of Georgia. This kind of high level meetings are tend to reach last minute deals as a result of negotiations quite often, - Kudava said.

The ceremony of initialing the association agreement between Georgia and EU will be held in Vilnius on November 29.