President Kavelashvili: ‘for us, Europe isn’t today’s EU bureaucracy’

Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili on Wednesday commented on the newly released US National Security Strategy, saying the document outlines different approaches across multiple areas and contains messages that closely align with Georgia’s own recent political stance.

Kavelashvili said the US strategy includes “much stricter warnings” to the European Union than Georgia has ever issued, arguing that Washington openly cautions Brussels that if it continues on its current path, “Europe and European values face the threat of disappearing”.

According to him, the issues highlighted in the strategy mirror many of the concerns the Georgian Government has raised with “European bureaucracy” in recent years.

Kavelashvili listed challenges referenced in the document: political crises, migration, identity issues, national interests, declining economic performance - “from 25 percent to 14 percent since the 1990s” - government instability and diminishing public trust in politicians.

He argued that the US stance toward Russia and China is also presented in a markedly different way compared to previous years.

“A few years ago, we began pursuing a policy based on national interests, our own security and economy. These are exactly the same priorities outlined in the American perspective,” Kavelashvili said, noting overlaps in domestic policy themes such as industrialisation, crime prevention, national interests and economic security.

He highlighted that the US document is not a spontaneous critique of the EU but a detailed assessment of the challenges the Union currently faces.

“For us, Europe is not today’s EU bureaucracy. Europe is something different - Europe is a set of values. And the US strategy warns precisely about the threat of losing those values,” Kavelashvili stated, adding that even Georgia had never used such stark language.