Georgian Parliament Speaker: red line must be drawn - no EU institution should ever dare to attack Georgian Orthodox Church

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Tuesday denounced the attack on the Georgian Orthodox Church by the EU institutions, assessing it as absolutely unacceptable.

Papuashvili commented on the statement by Archpriest Andria Jaghmaidze, the Head of the Georgian Patriarchate’s Public Relations Service, in response to the the latest report prepared by MEP Rasa Juknevičienė and adopted by the European Parliament, which referred to the Georgian Church as part of a Russian network.

Papuashvili said that this was the first time, in his view, that an institution of the European Union had attacked the Georgian Orthodox Church, calling such actions “absolutely unacceptable”.

“This is the first time that an EU institution has attacked the Georgian Church, which is absolutely unacceptable. A red line must be drawn here so that no one, including any institution of the European Union, will ever dare to attack the Georgian Church and its large congregation”, the Speaker said.

“It is clear that nothing good will come of Juknevičienė’s actions in Georgia, but it is also significant that she was made to test the waters for an attack on the Georgian Church. That is why it is important to react very harshly and directly to this now, so that this does not become a precedent and no one dares to attack the Georgian Church again”, he concluded.

Earlier, Jaghmaidze recalled an incident that took place in 2023 and had not been made public until now.

“We did not disclose it at the time because there was already polarisation in society. The matter concerns the August 2023 visit of the Belgian Foreign Minister to the Patriarchate”, said Jaghmaidze.

Jaghmaidze was referring to Hadja Lahbib, who currently serves as the European Commissioner for Equality and presented the European Commission’s new LGBTQ+ strategy for 2026-2030, approved in October 2025. Two years earlier, while serving as Belgium’s Foreign Minister, Lahbib visited Georgia and also held a meeting at the Georgian Patriarchate.

“Ms. Hadja Lahbib came to the Patriarchate and, among other issues, made a strange and unprecedented request. She said that the Patriarchate has significant influence in society, that Georgian society was far behind 21st-century trends, and that same-sex marriages were unacceptable to the public. She asked us to help promote this”, Jaghmaidze recalled.