GD Chair Slams EU Ambassador As Tenure Ends
As the EU Ambassador to Georgia Carl Hartzell announced the end of his tenure on July 20, ruling Georgian Dream party Chairperson Irakli Kobakhidze said the Ambassador “unfortunately” “played a strictly negative role in relations between the European Union and Georgia.”
MP Kobakhidze noted that the party “avoided commenting on him throughout this period while he was the incumbent EU Ambassador for various reasons, including the fact that we had submitted an application to the European Union, and this was an ongoing process, and so on.”
Now with that no longer being the case, the MP admitted, “This is a very sad fact. We really hope that the next Ambassador will act differently.”
Asked about Kobakhidze’s comments, GD MP and Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee Nikoloz Samkharadze stated, “I don’t like to and am not used to commenting on other people’s statements. Regarding an assessment of Mr. Hartzell, I can say that he could have worked better for Georgia to have received [EU] candidate status.”
Hartzell, who had been serving in the post since September 2018, will be replaced by Pawel Herczynski, as the new Head of the European Union Delegation to Georgia.
Herczynski is currently EEAS Managing Director for Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) and Crisis Response and also served as Director for Security and Defense Policy in the EEAS. Earlier, he worked as Ambassador of Poland to the Political and Security Committee (PSC).
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Note: The article was updated on July 21 at 16:45 to reflect MP Samkharadze’s statements.
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)