Parliament Speaker: EU should not become “space where Georgian criminals take refuge”

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Monday said the European Union “should not become a space where Georgian criminals take refuge”, in response to a recent visit of the wanted former official Zurab Adeishvili to Brussels and Germany as part of a Ukrainian delegation.

In his remarks over the matter, Papuashvili said Georgian citizens “expect that all European capitals will share the values” the former hold in their aspirations for their country to join the European Union.

The Georgian people expect that the values we share with the European Union, for which we are striving to the European Union, will be shared in all European capitals, at all levels, and accordingly there will be responses [to such facts]”, he said.

“Such meetings help reinforce and raise questions about how committed some European bureaucrats are to the values that we and the EU share in terms of the rule of law. This goes against the nine priorities outlined by the European Commission for Georgia [for opening EU accession talks]”, the lawmaker noted.

The Georgian Government on Monday raised “concerns” about visits and meetings that were hosted by the European Union and in Germany and involved Adeishvili.

In the statement, the Government said Adeishvili had been “one of the masterminds” behind the “repressive” former United National Movement “regime” that had been “continuously trampling the democratic and legal statehood principles”, along with “basic human rights and freedoms”, as well as independence of the Georgian judiciary.