Ruling party, opposition trade accusations of sinking joint resolution of EU-Georgia Association Committee
The 9th meeting of the EU-Georgia Parliamentary Association Committee was held in Strasbourg yesterday. Photo: Kakha Kaladze’s Twitter page.
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The ruling Georgian Dream party and the opposition are blaming one another for the inability of the EU-Georgia Parliamentary Association Committee to agree on the text of a joint resolution during its ninth meeting in Strasbourg yesterday.
Ruling party officials say that the country has a ‘harmful opposition’ who is unhappy with Georgia’s progress under the current state leadership, while the opposition says that the government is ‘incompetent and dangerous.’
The resolutions, which are made after the committee meetings, surveys the situation in the country and includes recommendations.
Ruling party official, Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze (in the middle), who was in Strasbourg yesterday, said that the opposition's action and statements were 'disgusting.' Photo: Kakha Kaladze's press office.
The declaration must be approved both by MEPs and Georgian delegates for it to be adopted.
The ruling party MPs say that the initial text was both supportive and critical and “was absolutely acceptable.’
However, they say that the opposition, with the help of their partner European People’s People, tried to bring in ‘critical sections in the text’ regarding the June 2019 protests in Tbilisi, Anaklia Port, Gigi Ugulava’s case and others, which were not approved by the ruling party representatives.
The European Georgia opposition party MP Otar Kakhidze has stated that the rejection of the resolution was a 'big failure of the ruling party.' Photo: Tabula.
As the sections which were damaging to the state interests were not reflected in the document, representatives of the European People’s Party [the United National Movement opposition belongs to] did not support the document and the resolution was rejected with five for and six against. The UNM, with the help of its partners, rejected the document as it did not say that people in Georgia are detained on political grounds,” ruling party MP Mamuka Mdinadarzde said.
He stated that the UNM acted in a similar way when Georgia was seeking visa liberalisation with the EU.
They aimed for Georgia not to gain visa liberalisation and to blame the Georgian Dream government for this,” Mdinaradze said.
UNM member Salome Samadashvili says that the opposition and MEPs proposed about 40 corrections in the draft document.
The critical remarks were about the election system, Anaklia Port, Gigi Ugulava’s case and the ruling party representatives did not support the corrections, while the MEPs refused to approve the document without the corrections,” Samadashvili said.
She said that the oppostion and MEPs 'shared same views' on the current situation in the country.
"Georgia continues to be a reliable and important partner for the European Union. We will be closely following political developments over the coming months, in light of the worrying increase in political polarisation in the country. We expect a level playing field and pluralism in the media environment for the elections later this year”, said High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell. He stated that the European Union ‘firmly supports’ Georgia's territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders.
EU-Georgia Association Parliamentary Committee, which discusses and assesses progress in the EU-Georgia relations, has held its eight meeting in Strasbourg yesterday and praised the progress achieved by Georgia between 2014 and 2018.
The third Association Implementation report released by Euroepan Commission says that Georgia's Association Agreement commitments, including its Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, have been implemented in line with agreed timelines.
The process for changing one’s surname has been made more difficult with the amendments prepared by the Ministry of Justice and passed by the Georgian parliament. The new regulations will help the Georgian government to easily identify citizens who violate visa free travel rules while the current law allows a person to change one’s surname 25 times or more on different grounds.