Georgian Parliament speaker: Tbilisi to get EU candidate status

Speaker of the Georgian Parliament Shalva Papuashvili has said he is optimistic about the upcoming European Union (EU) summit, which will be held on December 14-15, where a formal decision may be made to grant Tbilisi candidate status for membership.

It will be a European decision based on merit, he said, according to IMEDI.

“We have the main document - this is the conclusion of the European Commission, it is positive, which is also a recommendation for granting candidate status, and I do not see any obstacles for the decision of the European Council to be other than granting us candidate status,” Papuashvili said.

Before this, the EC recommended granting Georgia EU candidate status subject to conditions being met. Among the requirements that the European Commission names is the condition of “increasing the consistency of Georgia’s actions with the common foreign and security policy of the European Union.”

A formal decision on granting candidate status to Georgia will have to be made by the leaders of the EU member states at the summit in Brussels, which will take place on December 14-15. This decision must be unanimously adopted by all current members of the European Union.