Georgian people would not understand “another refusal” of EU candidacy - President
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili on Friday met with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Tbilisi. Photo: Salome Zourabichvili’s Twitter
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Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili on Friday said the country’s people would not understand “another refusal” from the European Union to grant Georgia its membership candidate status later this year.
Zourabichvili tweeted following her meeting with the visiting German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock to say Tbilisi was working to meet the conditions outlined by the bloc last year for granting it the status.
I thank @ABaerbock for coming to Georgia and for ????????'s continuous support for ????????’s independence & its unwavering European path.
— Salome Zourabichvili (@Zourabichvili_S) March 24, 2023
???????? continues to work towards receiving the ???????? candidate status. The Georgian people cannot understand another refusal & disappointment.
???????? counts on ???????? pic.twitter.com/YQoOfmpgHN
She also said Georgia was “counting on” German support on its European integration path, while noting the “disappointment” that could follow a second rejection of the status for the country.
Georgia officially applied for EU membership on March 3, 2022, shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and was granted a European perspective unlike Ukraine and Moldova, who both received the candidate status with conditions.
Despite calling the bloc’s decision “historic”, the Georgian Dream authorities have also lamented it as “unfair”, and stressed they expect a “merit-based” solution on the status by the end of 2023.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili on Friday said the European Commission’s “positive” assessment of the country’s alignment with the European Union framework was “very important”, following the publication of the report that evaluated the progress of Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova in their work for membership in the bloc.
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili on Tuesday said the European Council’s June decision on granting Georgia a European perspective instead of the European Union membership candidate status had been “political” and “not based on merit”, with the Government head adding his team nevertheless believed the country would receive the latter “very soon”.
Charles Michel, the President of the European Council, on Thursday said the body had granted the European Union membership candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova, and was ready to grant the same status to Georgia once the outstanding priorities outlined by the European Commission were addressed by the Georgian Government.
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili on Wednesday lamented that the European Commission had “not used a merit-based approach” when making its decision on the country’s European Union membership candidate status.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Friday said that her country’s citizens showed “great interest” in visiting Georgia, in comments during her first official trip to the country.
The cooperation between Georgia and Germany, the progress on the European integration path and the implementation of the EU conditions for granting the country the membership candidate status were discussed on Friday in a meeting between the Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
The process of the implementation of the European Union conditions for granting Georgia its membership candidate status was discussed on Monday in a meeting between Irakli Kobakhidze, the Chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party, and Pawel Herczynski, the European Union Ambassador to Georgia.