Parliament Speaker highlights Gov’t’s “trajectory towards EU” through “peace, prosperity”

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Thursday said the Georgian Government’s “trajectory towards the European Union” included achieving integration into the bloc through “peace and prosperity”.

“It seems that there is no doubt that our goal is European and Euro-Atlantic integration. They seem to have complaints about the trajectory of how we're going down this path. We are not going in the trajectory that some people expected us to go”, the Parliament Speaker said.

Some people told us that the path to Europe was through imposing sanctions on Russia. Presidents of some European countries told us that we should impose sanctions and escalate with Russia, which actually meant the threat and risk of war. This would be their understanding of the trajectory towards the EU through war. We rejected this trajectory”, he claimed.

Papuashvili also added “some foreigners” considered release of the imprisoned former President Mikheil Saakashvili “as part of this trajectory”, which the Government had also rejected.

This trajectory also included ignoring foreign funding of violence and disinformation campaigns in the country, such as the ‘Molotov cocktail campaign’ by [the civic movement] Shame. We rejected this. So we're not on the trajectory that some might have expected us to go”, he continued.

The Speaker claimed the rejection of the “foreign-dictated trajectory” had “made it possible to ensure peace and economic progress” in the country, and further pointed out that “we have a trajectory of prosperity and peace”.