Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee Chair: granting Georgia EU candidate status “good motivation” to pursue “necessary reforms”

Nikoloz Samkharadze, the Georgian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Chair, on Monday said granting Georgia the European Union membership candidate status would be a “good motivation” to pursue “necessary reforms”.

The Parliament official said the country had “done a lot” on its road to European integration, noting the Georgian authorities had “positive expectations” about the country’s membership bid.

Of course, we are not saying that we have done everything. If we had done everything, we would have applied not for the membership candidate status but for direct membership. We know that this is a long process, but to continue the same reforms that the country needs, of course, it will be a very good motivation to get the candidate status”, Samkharadze noted.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili on Saturday said he remained “optimistic” that a “sensible decision” would be made by the European Commission on the country’s EU membership bid, which he said would be in the “best interest of both sides”.