U.S. Ambassador: “Get to work” for EU Candidacy

“Get to work, get to work on actually fulfilling the [EC] recommendations, not talking about them” – this was the message of the US Ambassador Kelly Degnan to the Georgian government and opposition. Ambassador was speaking at the USAID event on July 8, and fielded questions concerning the ongoing political debate.

Ambassador lambasted the open letter by MP Mikheil Kavelashvili – who recently split off from the ruling Georgian Dream – as “unhinged” and “full of lies and conspiracy theories.” In his letter, Kavelashvili accused US Ambassador of encouraging civil society actors and opposition that, according to him and his two colleagues, push the country towards war with Russia. Amb. Degnan pointed out that “former GD MPs’ narrative tracks very closely with some of the ruling party leaders” and that Kavelashvili’s rhetoric “doesn’t sound like he’s really distanced from the party as he says.”

Accenting the need for meaningfully fulfilling the EC recommendations as the only way towards the candidate status of the EU, Amb. Degnan stressed: “there’s no question about what needs to be done. The leaders in society have been talking about this for as long as I’ve been here, certainly in the last year.  There’s a very clear roadmap, and Georgia’s leaders have already agreed to most of these reforms.  It is now a matter of doing it. It’s action, not words, not working groups, but action to move [forward].”

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