Ruling party head highlights foreign policy “priority” of moving country forward on EU integration

Irakli Kobakhidze, the Chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party, on Wednesday said one of the “main foreign policy priorities” of the Georgian Government was to “move the country forward” on its European integration path. 

In his remarks over the matter, Kobakhidze noted the Government would implement the nine priorities set out by the European Commission for the European Union membership candidate status for the country, irrespective of whether the domestic opposition decided to become involved in the process. 

“The opposition also said that we would not receive the candidate status, but we see that we are about to receive [it], and this is the merit of the single-party work carried out by Georgian Dream”, he said.

Of course, I do not want to belittle the merits of several political parties that were involved in the working groups [on implementation of the EU conditions], but let me remind you that the subjects of the largest opposition factions were not represented there”, he continued.

The ruling party head also added there was “nothing to catch up on” with Ukraine and Moldova - fellow EU membership applicant states - in terms of reforms, and claimed “we are significantly ahead of both countries in all aspects”.