The ruling Georgian Dream party and Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili “are hampering” the country’s European integration process, a Political Secretary of the For Georgia opposition party, Kakhaber Kemoklidze, said on Friday, in response to the recent address of Garibashvili to the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, claiming that Georgia deserved the EU membership candidate status. 

Kemoklidze, a former GD official representing a party founded by former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia, said that the current authorities “will have to pay a high price” for their [anti-Western] moves.

“I agree with Garibashvili that Georgia deserves to join the EU. The country has paid a high price for this over the past 30 years. However, Garibashvili and the current Government are only hindering the process and creating challenges for the country's EU candidacy”, Kemoklidze said, noting that a “clever electorate” of the GD would give “proper assessments” to the government’s activities and the authorities would be held accountable for their activities. 

Unlike Ukraine and Moldova, Georgia was granted European perspective in June by the EU Council and was given several months to address 12 conditions for the membership candidate status, which include judiciary and electoral reform, depolarisation, de-oligarchization and others.