Georgian Parliament Speaker: Georgia remains strongly committed to European Union membership path

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Monday said as Europe was facing serious challenges, the debate about federalism and national sovereignty should center on maximising the benefits of integration while respecting the autonomy and traditions of member states.

In his address at the Conference of Speakers of the Parliaments of the European Union Member States and Partner Countries in Budapest, Papuashvili noted that excessively empowered central structures of the European Union might not allow for making decisions that best reflect unique political, economic, and cultural contexts of each country.

“Georgia remains strongly committed to the European Union membership path. I represent the government that has done the most to advance Georgia towards the EU. From the Parliament’s point of view, we have seen some peculiar treatment from the European institutions. While the Parliament is elected by the Georgian people and represents its will, regrettably, we see a tendency by some European institutions to speak with us in a language of directives, imposing obligations without granting the rights”, the Parliament Speaker said.

“Having obligations without the right of the voice, especially within the EU institutions where Georgia has no representation as yet, does not fit well with the very principle of democratic pluralism, on which the EU rests”, he noted.

He emphasised that centralised EU structure sometimes imposes strict conditionality that does not necessarily reflect the consensus.

“One example of this practice was the demand from Georgia to establish a system of extraordinary integrity checks for judges, so-called vetting, conducted by foreign actors. This system, if accepted, would contradict the very principle of democracy, where authority stems from the people. The entire branch of power would thus become set up by the foreign actors, which goes contrary to the very essence of national sovereignty”, Papuashvili said.

Papuashvili also doubted that any of the EU member states would have allowed such an intervention in their sovereignty.

“Democracy shall be based on deliberation, not imposition. Consensus ensures that decisions are made collaboratively, respecting the interests and concerns of all member states and partners. This, also, means a Europe where decisions are made not only in centralized unelected bodies, but increasingly closer to the people. In this regard, it is worth giving a more critical examination to the current debate about replacing consensus-based decision-making with a majority principle. In a community of nation-states, small states’ voices should be heard equal to the others, because the truth is not measured by the quantity alone”, he concluded.