Georgian Parliament Speaker questions prospects for near-term EU enlargement

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said on Friday that the public should be aware of the realities surrounding European Union enlargement, arguing that no one was currently considering expansion in the immediate future and that the bloc’s plans for 2030 remained highly uncertain.

Papuashvili made the remarks in response to journalists’ questions about recent statements concerning Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.

“Anyone who names a specific date for enlargement is, in the best-case scenario, being insincere and, in the worst-case scenario, simply lying. Today, no one can name a specific date or year when EU enlargement will take place in general. Even less can anyone say which countries will be included in that enlargement”, Papuashvili said.

He argued that Brussels had adopted a misguided approach by creating false hopes and encouraging societies to believe that enlargement would take place sooner or later and that their countries would eventually become EU members.

“The reality is diametrically different”, he said.

“It is important that our society understands this reality: no one is considering EU enlargement in the immediate future, and there is a huge question mark over what decision will be made regarding 2030. There is also uncertainty over what form the European Union itself is taking”, Papuashvili said.

He also pointed to what he described as changing rules in the accession process, noting that discussions were underway about the possibility of new members not enjoying full membership rights and instead becoming “second-class members”.

Papuashvili stressed that Georgia should not allow the enlargement process to dominate its domestic political debate or dictate the country’s development path.

“Our country must develop according to its own logic, pursue its goals, strengthen itself and reunify the country. The eventual outcome of this process may be EU membership, rather than the opposite - becoming so carried away by the idea of EU membership that we stumble and fall today, as some candidate countries are doing”, he concluded.