EU Ambassador to Georgia Pavel Gerchinsky told journalists that the impeachment procedure against the President will not help the country become strong and stable as the EU would like.
According to Gerchinsky, all the recommendations of the European Commission are equally important for the country to receive EU candidate status, but the EU expects progress in the issues of de-oligarchization, reform of the judicial system and freedom of media most of all.
When asked whether the topic of impeachment was discussed during his meeting with President Salome Zurabishvili, Gerchinsky said that the main topic of their meeting was Georgia’s European integration.
As the Ambassador explains, at the end of June, the European Commission made a verbal statement that Georgia had fully implemented three of the 12 recommendations. Several months have passed since then, and Gerchinsky emphasizes that clear progress has been made on some items that were only partially implemented.
Georgia applied for EU membership on March 3, 2022, after which the government received a questionnaire from the European Commission and, having completed it, returned it to Brussels in May.
On June 17, 2022, the European Commission prepared an opinion on granting EU candidate status to Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova. Ukraine and Moldova were granted this status and had to fulfill certain obligations. And Georgia was ordered to first implement the 12-point recommendation plan, and only then it will have a chance to get the candidate status.
On June 22, 2023, it became known that Georgia had fully implemented three of the twelve recommendations.
As for Moldova and Ukraine, whose progress was also assessed alongside Georgia, Moldova had at that point fully implemented three of the nine priorities, and Ukraine had fully implemented two of the seven priorities. All this was outlined in the interim oral report, which is an important signal to the countries and indicates which areas they should pay particular attention to before the European Commission presents its enlargement package and recommendations in October.
EU member states will decide whether to grant candidate status to Georgia in December 2023.
