Mayor of Tbilisi on EU conditions: “Blackmail game”

Kaladze on EU

Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, in response to the statement of MEP Andrei Kubilius on the conditions for granting Georgia candidate status, called it “part of the blackmail game that we have been observing all this time.”

According to Kubilius, if the Georgian government continues to treat ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili as it is now, the EU will conclude that the Georgian government is not fulfilling the EU’s recommendations.

“Our government has done and is doing everything on this difficult path. However, if a political decision is made on their part to refuse the status of a candidate, if they do not give us this status, then let them keep it for themselves.

I have already said many times and I will repeat that Saakashvili’s “return” to Georgia was a staged performance. This was done to cause a confrontation, a coup d’état. For the so-called friends of Georgia, the authorities are unacceptable because they did not get involved in the war,” Kaladze says.

• MEPs: “The cause of the decline of democracy in Georgia is Ivanishvili”
• “These are words from the FSB” – reaction to the the Prime Minister of Georgia’s statement

Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova jointly applied for EU membership on March 3, 2022.

On June 17, the European Commission prepared a report on granting Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova candidate status for EU membership. It was decided to grant this status to Ukraine and Moldova, while Georgia was first obliged to fulfill the plan and conditions of 12 points.

On July 13, it became known that the European Commission had postponed the assessment of the implementation of the 12 points planned for Georgia until 2023 instead of 2022.

On October 13, 2022, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) approved a resolution that recognizes the Russian regime as “terrorist”, becoming the first international organization to adopt such a document.

Later the resolution was amended to include “consideration of cases and the release of political prisoners who oppose President Putin, including citizen of Ukraine and former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili.”