“Georgia is a candidate country. They took obligations to follow democratic standards, and it is on their side to fulfil them,” Kęstutis Budrys, Foreign Minister of Lithuania, told reporters ahead of the EU Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) in Luxembourg.
The Lithuanian FM responded to the question if changes in Hungary could move the issue of sanctions related to Georgia forward.
“We are late. We are already late. More than one year ago, Lithuania proposed sanctions, as we did nationally, to impose them at the EU level, and that would have been the right thing to do. And now, looking at the situation one year later, when democracy is backsliding even further in Georgia, that is the result.
We were too late and too slow. This is the outcome. So we should proceed now. Georgia is a candidate country. They took obligations to follow democratic standards, and it is on their side to fulfil them. If they are not ready to do this, then we have to raise the question of the association agreement and the candidate status,” he said.
