EU’s assessment for Georgia’s candidacy to be negative – Girchi More Freedom opposition chair

The European Union’s assessments on Georgia’s membership candidate status expected to be negative, the Girchi More Freedom opposition party head Zurab Japaridze said on Tuesday, noting that the bloc was likely to start drafting the evaluation document on Georgia’s meeting 12-point conditions for candidacy in February-March, with the document made public by the end of the next year instead of early of 2023. 

“There will probably not be any evaluation mission in Georgia at the end of this year”, Japaridze said.

He stated that the EU probably had plans to observe how the country “practically implemented” several of the “most problematic” conditions after the adoption of relevant laws, which included de-oligarchization.

“They would observe how the laws will work in practice and make a decision on candidacy only after”, Japaridze said. 

The politician also claimed that he had been told while in Brussels that the Georgian Dream authorities were trying to negotiate at the level of the heads of state to get candidate status “directly”.

“They [the West] see that the Georgian Dream is using three strategies at the moment, and they told us that all the three strategies are doomed to failure. One is that the authorities are trying to allow the amendments which are less problematic to them; the second is ‘trading with conditions’  – that they will meet several of them, while others will remain unfulfilled and the third is to try to get the status directly”, Japaridze said. 

The politician suggested that the West was “well-aware” that the Georgian Dream stood behind the “anti-Western” propaganda in Georgia, and that “no former MPs of the ruling party actually existed”.