Shalva Papuashvili, the Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, stated that the EU had presented Tbilisi with political demands instead of criteria for visa-free travel for Georgian citizens. He noted that in such a case, the country’s sovereignty is more valuable, and it “is not traded for strawberries.”
Speaking about the June 11 meeting between representatives of the Georgian authorities and the EU, Papuashvili pointed out that it would not address political issues, but would instead focus on a technical agenda. A working group has already been formed within the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
According to the politician, Brussels demanded that Tbilisi join anti-Russian sanctions and abandon legislation aimed at ensuring the transparency of foreign funding.
“Unfortunately, we saw that instead of criteria that are truly important for the visa-free regime, political conditions were invented and put forward regarding Georgia. This directly violates our country’s sovereign right to independently determine the agenda of our own state. Therefore, as the saying goes, sovereignty is not traded for strawberries,” he emphasized.