Tbilisi: The European Union evaluation of Georgia’s membership candidate status is most likely to be negative, stated Zurab Japaridze, the head of the Girchi More Freedom opposition party. According to him, the bloc will most probably start drafting the evaluation document on Georgia fulfilling the 12-point conditions to acquire candidacy in February-March, and the document will be unveiled to the public by the end of the next year instead of the beginning of 2023.
“There is a probability that there will not be any evaluation mission in Georgia at the end of this year”, Japaridze said.
Also, he informed about the EU planning to scrutinize the practical implementation of several of the ‘highly problematic’ conditions after relevant laws have been adopted, including de-oligarchization.
“The EU would first look over how the laws will work in practice and decide on providing candidacy only after”, Japaridze said
Japaridze also noted about being informed, while he was in Brussels, that the Georgian Dream authorities were attempting negotiation at the level of heads of the state in order to directly achieve the candidate status.
The West see that the Georgian Dream employs three different approaches currently, and they told us that all three strategies are doomed to failure. The first approach says that the authorities are trying to allow the amendments which are lesser problematic to them; the second is ‘trading with conditions – that they will meet several of them, while others will remain unfulfilled and the third is to try to get the status directly”, Japaridze stated.
He suggested that West knows very well that the Georgian Dream authorities have been behind the anti-western propaganda in Georgia and that no former MPs of the ruling party actually existed.
