TBILISI, June 5. /TASS/. Kakhaber Kaladze, Secretary General of the ruling Georgian Dream - Democratic Georgia party and Mayor of Tbilisi, has called on EU bureaucrats to respect the republic's sovereignty and stop dictating how the country should behave.
"The attitude some bureaucrats display, spouting nonsense they expect us to accept as truth, is completely unacceptable. They must respect Georgia as an independent, sovereign state," Kaladze told Georgian journalists.
The mayor reiterated that Georgia is open to allying itself with other countries, but only if both sides want this. "We’ve said repeatedly that the Georgian government is ready for friendship and cooperation, but it must be mutual. Georgia is not anyone’s backyard where they can give orders or instructions. We are an independent country. Our ancestors fought and spilled their blood for this," he emphasized.
The day before, the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a report critical of the current Georgian government. The document, authored by MEP Rasa Jukneviciene, accused the ruling party of rigging last year’s parliamentary elections and blocking Georgia’s EU integration, among other allegations.
Georgia was granted EU candidate status in late 2023, but relations with the Union went south in 2024 after the ruling party passed a controversial law on foreign agents, despite mass protests and Western pressure. On November 28, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that Tbilisi was freezing EU accession talks. However, Georgian authorities have maintained that they remain open to resuming the integration process, provided the EU takes the appropriate steps and refrains from "blackmailing" the country over EU issues.