Saakashvili: Georgia’s European Integration Irreversible
No matter how relations will develop between EU and Russia, the process of Georgia’s integration into Europe will be irreversible, President Saakashvili told journalists on November 14.
“We have received a political support from the French President [Nicolas Sarkozy, who he met in Paris on November 13] and already yesterday the French government and the EU presidency [France] said that Georgia and Ukraine would be granted a status of EU’s privileged partner,” Saakashvili told a group of Georgian journalists in Baku, where the President participated in the energy summit.
“It [status of privileged partner] means that it will be much easier to travel to Europe; it will be much easier to export our products to Europe; it will be much easier to attract European investments that will make easier to employ people in Georgia, to create new enterprises in Georgia. Georgia will become part of European political and economic space,” he said. “After the Russia’s aggression, Europe is seriously thinking that – regardless of how reserved Europe may be towards enlargement and regardless of how European relations will develop with the Russian Federation – the process of Georgia’s integration should become irreversible.”
He also said that his meeting with President Sarkozy on the eve of the EU-Russia summit “had an important political and symbolic significance, because it showed that the EU holds consultations with Georgia before this difficult meeting with Russia.”
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