Georgia must redouble its efforts to hope to obtain, by the end of the year, the status of official candidate to the European Union (EU). This is the message delivered by the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, during his first visit to the country, Thursday 7 and Friday 8 September. Candidate status, to which more than 80% of the Georgian population aspires, “must be achieved by adopting profound reforms and adhering to the values of the European Union. To be frank, there is still work to be done”added the EU High Representative.
His trip comes at a crucial time for this former Soviet republic, at the heart of a struggle for influence between Russia and the EU, against a backdrop of tension linked to the war in Ukraine. This small country in the Caucasus, 20% of whose territory has been occupied by Russian troops since the war with Moscow in 2008, has until the end of the year to implement the twelve recommendations imposed by Brussels before obtaining a possible green light.
However, for months, the government, close to Moscow, seems to be doing everything to stop the process, although it claims the opposite. The last episode was on 1er September, when Tbilisi launched, in a spectacular and unprecedented way, an impeachment procedure against the Georgian President, Salomé Zurabishvili. The government, led by the Georgian Dream party, accuses him of violating the Constitution by touring Europe without his consent.
The president, a former French diplomat, has an essentially symbolic role in the country, but her pro-Western positions and her opposition to the government’s policy of proximity to Russia have made her a privileged interlocutor of European leaders, anxious not to let the country fall back into the clutches of Moscow in the middle of the war in Ukraine.
“Alarming” approach
In Georgia, around ten NGOs denounced the approach “alarming” of the government and called on it to end the impeachment process. denouncing “a direct attack on the EU”, they recall that the Georgian Constitution itself obliges the President and the government to take all measures to ensure the country’s integration into the European Union.
In France, Emmanuel Macron gave strong support to Salomé Zourabichvili on Wednesday, welcoming “the courageous fight she leads, for democracy, for the rule of law and for what[’il croit] the future of the Georgian people, that is to say truly this European anchor”. Despite the government’s coup, the impeachment process is unlikely to succeed. It requires the vote of one hundred deputies, while the ruling party, Georgian Dream, only has eighty-two. The government will therefore have to convince at least twelve members of the opposition, an uncertain prospect.
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