On July 13, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament discussed the draft of the annual report on the implementation of the Association Agreement by Georgia with the European Union, which was prepared by Estonian MEP Sven Mikser.
During the speech, the members of the committee talked about the problems facing Georgia and emphasized that in order to get the candidate status, the country must fulfill the requirements of the European Union as quickly as possible, one of the most important of which is deoligarchization.
“The first point of the EU's demands calls on the Georgian political community to depolarize and align with “Charles Michel’s agreement”, however, it seems that the country's government is doing the opposite. Even though they created a special depolarization commission in the parliament, if you listen to their statements, you will see that they are trying to increase polarization.
They blame everyone around - not only the opposition and civil society but also the US ambassador and the European Union as if we are pushing them to war, which is completely absurd!
This looks like Kremlin propaganda. The Kremlin says that the West is to blame for everything, and the ruling party of Georgia repeats the same thing. It seems that we should use this opportunity to explain to them what these 12 points mean - what depolarization and deoligarchization are because they themselves do not understand.
An oligarch is a person who has a lot of money, who hijacks the state, and the one who can appoint his former bodyguards, advisers and assistants as ministers and prime ministers. There is only one such person in Georgia - this is Bidzina Ivanishvili", said European Parliamentarian Andrews Kubilius.
European parliamentarian Miriam Lexmann also spoke about the excessive influence of the oligarch and other problems facing the country at the committee meeting.
"One oligarch maintains excessive influence on the political landscape. In addition, judicial reforms have been suspended. We see cases of attacks on media representatives, we also see cases of de facto imprisonment, such as the cases of the third president and the director of the opposition media - we must highlight these trends," added Lexman.
Based on the report on the implementation of the Association Agreement, the European Union will probably adopt another resolution regarding Georgia in September 2022.
