Georgian Parliament Speaker: Brussels views EU candidate countries as being “on the menu”

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said on Friday that Brussels viewed EU candidate countries as being “on the menu”, with decisions about them made by those “sitting at the table”. He argued that Georgia should not be treated as a country whose future can be decided by others.

Papuashvili made the remarks in response to a journalist’s question about Gia Japaridze’s statement that Georgia had long ceased to be on the EU’s “menu” as a result of deliberate actions by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Papuashvili said Japaridze had, in his words, “repeated” a position recently voiced by some EU commissioners, including European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos. He claimed that candidate countries were being treated as “second-class people” and told not to maintain relations with MAGA, the political movement associated with US President Donald Trump.

“This slip of the tongue also repeated what we have recently been hearing from some Brussels commissioners, including Commissioner Kos - they view candidate countries as second-class people and prohibit them from having relations with MAGA, meaning Trump’s ideological foundation, while they themselves maintain relations with it. In other words, they think they are our guardians and that we are not mature enough to decide for ourselves whom we should have relations with”, Papuashvili said.

He also referred to what he described as proposals for future EU members to have fewer rights, including no veto power, saying this would effectively mean that they would remain “on the menu”.

“Unfortunately, this is how Brussels views it today: candidate countries are on the menu, and those sitting at the table make decisions about them. This is also how those Georgian citizens without a sense of homeland view it, whose goal is for us to somehow end up on the menu, and then we are supposed to watch who will devour us and how”, Papuashvili said.

He added that the “menu” expression was not simply a slip of the tongue, but reflected the idea that countries that were not “sitting at the table” as equal decision-makers would have decisions made about them by others.

“That is how they view Georgia - that we should be served on a platter to the EU or Brussels bureaucrats. This is not a slip of the tongue; it is an expression that if you are not sitting at the table, you are on the menu. This means that if you are not equal and are not among those making decisions, others will make decisions about you”, Papuashvili concluded.