Georgian Parliament Speaker slams EU response to presidential palace ‘attack’

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Wednesday criticized the European Union for its handling of the “violent assault on the Presidential Palace” last year, asserting that Brussels was “increasingly abandoning” the values upon which the EU was founded.

In a statement posted on social media, Papuashvili said that four months after the attack, which left more than twenty police officers hospitalized, the EU had neither condemned the incident nor distanced itself from it. 

He further accused the union of attempting to downplay the severity of the attack through organizations allegedly involved in a “fake Estonian registration scheme” and “heavily funded” by the EU budget.

"This is no longer silence - this is a position," Papuashvili wrote. "It clearly demonstrates that Brussels is increasingly detaching itself from the values on which the EU once stood, and equating itself with hatred, violence, and extremism. Unless Brussels radically changes its course, the European Union risks becoming European in name only - empty, valueless, and meaningless."