Georgia is unlikely to accede to the European Union in the near future despite being granted candidate status last December, the chairman of the country’s ruling party, Irakli Gharibashvili, said on Saturday.
“The country reached its maximum, the peak was last December, we became a candidate country. The next step is joining. Today we are not ready to become a member country,” Gharibashvil stressed.
The Georgian Dream politician and former Prime Minister defended a controversial new bill that would designate NGOs, election groups and media outlets that receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from abroad as agents of foreign influence.
According to him, the adoption of the law “On transparency of foreign influence” is necessary for transparency. He said:
“Do you know what the problem is? We have three thousand years of history, but we are ambushed by what the representative of some country said, what the representative of Europe, America said. Friends, we cannot develop, we cannot move forward this way. We must do what Georgia needs and what the Georgian people need. Today Georgian people need peace, stability and development. The country does not need war and destruction.”
Experts fear the law will put a wedge between Georgia and the West and strangle the opposition. The EU has told Georgia that the proposals, which have brought thousands of people onto the streets in protest over recent weeks, are incompatible with European values and should be withdrawn, whereas the United States has labelled the law as an attack on civil society.
The European Commission granted Georgia candidate status last year, it outlined concrete steps needed for the South Caucasus country to be accepted as a full member, including tackling political polarisation and strengthening human rights protections. The adoption of the Foreign Agents Act, as well as new government proposals restricting LGBTQ+ rights, could negatively impact the path towards the EU, according to Josep Borell. Gharibashvil, in turn, said that Georgia’s next steps depend on many things, on many factors:
“There is no consensus that a country can become a member of the European Union today, especially now, there are so many problems and you know it will take a long time. Today the EU is not ready for enlargement and it will take time and these next steps depend on many things, many factors. I want to tell you very simply, if by the time the country is ready and they tell us that tomorrow you will become a member of the European Union, this law can be cancelled, revised, changed.”
