Photo: European Union

Nino Samkharadze[1]

[This publication was produced with the financial support of the Open Society Georgia Foundation. The views, opinions and statements expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs only and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foundation. Therefore, the Open Society Georgia Foundation is not responsible for the content of the information material].

After meeting with Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili, the President of the European Council Charles Michel gave a reminder of the conditionality of the EU financial assistance on his own Twitter account.  A few days later the leaders of Georgian Dream stated that a decision had been made that Georgia might reject Brussel’s macro-financial assistance.

The government is trying to justify its approach within a macro-political context, although there is another point of view – that they made this decision before the EU could act first and apply the conditionality principle. It appears that the ruling party aspires to maintaining power and in order to achieve this goal it is ready to endanger even the country’s strategic partnership relations.   

Therefore, it is interesting to examine what threats are linked to this government decision, the path of democratic development in Georgia and its European integration, and what might be the motives behind the approach of the ruling party.