Georgian Parliament Speaker highlights country’s top position in Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Index

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Saturday highlighted the country’s ranking among top “free” states based on governance in the Atlas of Freedom and Prosperity by the Atlantic Council, an American international affairs think-tank, saying the progress of the country was “remarkable”.  

Papuashvili emphasised Georgia had been ranked above all European Union candidate countries, six NATO member states and two EU members in the Index. 

He also claimed the ranking demonstrated that the EU “should have opened accession negotiations with the country already if its decisions towards Georgia were merit-based”.

The ranking includes an analysis of the 2023 Freedom Index, which categorises 164 countries and territories into four groups: free, mostly free, mostly unfree and unfree, with Georgia listed as leading in Europe in long-term freedom rating progress since 2012.

The country is among the 45 countries in the world that have been granted the status of the highest category.

In the ranking of freedom, Georgia is the only candidate country of the European Union to be given the highest category status, and is placed ahead of Poland, Hungary, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Turkey and all EU candidate states, while being placed fourth among post-Soviet countries after the Baltic states.

With long-term improvement in the freedom rating position over the last decade, Georgia ranks sixth in the world, second on the Eurasian continent and first in Europe. During the period, the rating position of the country has improved by 23 steps, from 68th to 45th.