Tag Archives: European Union (EU)

The European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) previewed on October 9, the implementation of the European Union Association Agreement with Georgia and, while welcoming progress, highlighted areas that need additional efforts for the country to get closer to the EU. MEPs welcomed Georgia’s “sustained reform track, which makes it a key EU …

Ambassador Carl Hartzell met today with President Giorgi Margvelashvili to present his credentials as the Head of the EU Delegation to Georgia. Hartzell, a Swedish diplomat, took up his duties early September, succeeding Janos Herman, who served at the post since 2014. Speaking after the meeting, Hartzell said he and the …

The Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn, who is on a visit to Georgia on September 3-4, met with Georgian officials, discussing the EU-Georgia Association Agreement and the possibilities for enhanced cooperation in the bilateral, regional and multilateral formats. At a joint press conference with Georgian Foreign …

Ani Chkhikvadze of Voice of America’s Georgian Service interviewed Dalibor Rohac, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), on recent political and economic developments in Central and Eastern Europe. There is a lot of discussion on the backsliding of countries like Hungary and Poland, as well as on …

Georgian Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze, who traveled to Brussels on July 18-20 on his first foreign visit after assuming power, reaffirmed in his meetings with European officials that Georgia remains committed to its EU aspirations. “Today, we are more than ever motivated to do more and go even further on our …

The European Union is enhancing ties with Georgia in civil protection and disaster risk management to bring the country closer to the Civil Protection Mechanism, the EU instrument that enables coordinated assistance from its participating states. The respective arrangement was signed in Tbilisi today by the European Commissioner on Humanitarian Aid …

Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze will travel to Brussels later this month in his first foreign visit after assuming power. According to PM’s press office, Bakhtadze will visit Belgium on July 18-20 and hold talks with officials from the European Commission, the European Council and NATO. Mamuka Bakhtadze was tapped to be the …

On July 2, Foreign Minister Davit Zalkaliani, while on his first working visit in this capacity to Berlin, met his German counterpart Heiko Maas. Two ministers discussed Georgia’s European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations. According to the Georgian Foreign Ministry, Heiko Maas hailed the country’s contribution to the NATO mission in Afghanistan and stressed that …

Voice of America’s Ani Chkhikvadze sat down with Ambassador Kurt Volker, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, to discuss Georgia’s domestic and foreign affairs. Recently, Syria’s Assad Government recognized occupied Abkhazia and Ossetia as independent states. Why do you think we saw this right now, especially given that Georgia, as …

U.S. National Democratic Institute (NDI) released its public opinion survey, which shows respondents’ attitudes towards broad range of issues, among them political parties, foreign policy and government performance. The survey was fielded by the Caucasus Resource Research Centers (CRRC) for NDI between March 20 and April 4 with the financial …

The decision “by the de facto Abkhaz authorities” to drop charges against Rashid Kanji-Ogli, Abkhaz serviceman, who was sentenced in absentia over the murder of Giga Otkhozoria, “is worrying, and prevents justice taking its rightful course,”  the European Union said in its June 28 statement at the OSCE Annual Security …

MEP Rebecca Harms chairs the 60-member European Parliament Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. Photo: facebook.com/RebeccaHarmsMEP/ MEP Rebecca Harms, who chairs the 60-member European Parliament Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, told Civil.ge on June 20 that the “forced disappearance” of Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli “needs to be investigated and …

Recent weeks saw abduction of the Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli and the extradition case of Mustafa Çabuk, the Turkish national working as a high-school administrator in Georgia, who is being charged by Ankara for alleged connections with exiled cleric Fethullah Gullen. We have asked analysts Lincoln Mitchell, Willam Dunbar and …

“Georgia is no longer a post-[Soviet] country. I think we need to get rid of this post clichés. We are a country which can be easily called Eastern European country,” the Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili noted at the Bratislava Global Security Forum (GLOBSEC) on May 28. Speaking on the “Eastern Neighborhood …

Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili participated in the World Economic Forum (WEF) on the Middle East and North Africa that took place on May 19-21 in Jordan. Kvirikashvili held a number of bilateral meetings on the sideline of the forum. On May 20, Prime Minister Kvirikashvili and the King of …

Herbert Salber, EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, held talks with Deputy Foreign Minister Davit Dondua on May 19, two days after the Georgian Foreign Ministry summoned the European Union Ambassador Janos Herman over the Special Representative’s statements in Tskhinvali the previous day. Herbert …

Various Georgian politicians sharply criticized the statement by the EU special representative for South Caucasus and Geneva talks co-chair, Herbert Salber, who congratulated Tskhinvali leader Anatoly Bibilov on his victory in the presidential election held by Tskhinvali authorities on April 9. Georgian MP and former foreign minister (2004-2005), Salome Zourabichvili …

Foreign allies and international organization piled in support to Georgia’s sovereignty and said Abkhazia’s “so called parliamentary elections” do not stand international scrutiny. These statements are a token of crucial diplomatic support to Georgia. But they also mask the absence of policy fit to overcome the current impasse. The European …

Georgia is one of the few bright lights among the countries of the Eastern partnership. It is all the more regrettable, therefore, that there has been a delay in agreeing the visa liberalisation regime between Georgia and the EU before the Georgian parliamentary elections on 8 October. This is unfortunate …

Georgia’s perennial dilemma is whether it can survive as an independent state and pursue its sovereign choices in the context of great power competition characteristic to the region. As a small state struggling for survival, it tended to rely and to a degree idealize the potency of a benign political …