President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili said yesterday that Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili’s parliamentary address was “absurd and very offensive” in its content that had sent the most negative message possible to Brussels, just as the members of the European Council were gathering to discuss the candidacy applications of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia.
The President mockingly summarized Garibashvili’s argument to Georgian MPs where he tried to explain why Moldova and Ukraine were recommended by the European Commission as candidates, while Georgia got preconditions. Zurabishvili said PM Garibashvili’s argument sounded like “’we are the best, we did everything well, nothing is impossible; we are performing much better than Ukraine and Moldova, we could not understand why are they ahead of us, probably only because you wanted [us in] a war and we do not want one”.
President Zurabishvili explained, that Georgia’s partners in the EU expected a simple statement from the Georgian government, that is “expressing the political will [to implement the recommendations], that we will read the recommendations, we will analyze them”, even though “it might not mean that we accept everything, but we are ready to do everything together, in a non-polarized and not confrontational manner to fulfill the [priorities] sent to us by the end of the year.”
But instead, President Zurabishvili said, Prime Minister Garibashvili’s address left the public and herself baffled.
“I would like to send another message from here to Brussels that this was not Georgia, this was not the will of the Georgian people. I do not know what it was – whether this happened deliberately or unintentionally… I no longer have the answer to all of this.”
The President’s address comes as the country awaits European Council’s final decision on its EU candidacy expected to be delivered at the June 23-24 summit.
The European Commission’s June 17 Opinion, which the European Council is likely to adhere to, recommended granting a European perspective to Georgia with the possibility of candidate status if it fulfills concrete requirements in the coming months.
Also Read:
- President Slams Gov’t Over ‘Spoiled Work’ in Brussels
- European Parliament Debates EU Candidacy for Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia
- European Parliament Backs EU Perspective for Georgia
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