"Georgia is attempting to join the EU and NATO. Those organizations have certain standards and certain referees that say what the rules are, and we simply want Georgia to continue to match those standards rather than to deviate", - James O'Brien, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs of the United States of America, said at a press conference.
According to him, the USA wants Georgia to have a continuous peaceful path to the European Union and NATO.
“Some advocates of the Transparency of Foreign Influence law say that transparency of funding must be a prime national interest of Georgia. They feel that some Western funders are not as transparent as we might be. Our interest is in seeing Georgia converge with the European Union and transatlantic norms for addressing issues like transparency. Frankly, we think neither the process nor the, the actual law implemented meets that standard. We hope to have more discussions to see any step on transparency matching European norms as Georgia goes forward. We were promised that there would be the opportunity for this before the law is implemented. I was very clear that there would be consequences if the law were implemented as it now stands. The Prime Ministers referred to this as coercion, but it’s not.
Georgia is attempting to join the EU and NATO. Those organizations have certain standards and certain referees that say what the rules are, and we simply want Georgia to continue to match those standards rather than to deviate. But there is a sense because a decision by Georgia to not converge with Europe would be a rejection of the path that is in Georgia’s own constitution. We believe, and we see it in the polls, we see it on the streets, we hear it from every political party, including Georgian Dream, backers of Georgian Dream, their business community and others. The Georgian people very much want to continue down that path, and we will stand with them as we have for more than 30 years, and we will stand with them going forward,” the US Assistant Secretary of State declared.
