President: Georgia's EU membership prospects depend on October elections

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has emphasized that Georgia’s prospects for EU membership will hinge entirely on the outcomes of the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 26.  

“Georgia's EU integration prospects are currently on hold,” she noted at a press conference, Caliber.Az reports citing the Georgian media.

“This [EU membership] is the task of our day and for our entire society. It fully depends on the elections. Everyone is waiting for us. Everything is on pause, but it is neither halted nor frozen permanently. This suspension is before the elections, so that everyone can see the will of the Georgian people,” she stressed.

She is confident that Georgia deserves to return to the path of European integration.

“We are a European country. We have come a long way toward this, which gives us the right to demand an accelerated return to our path. It depends on our voters,” the president added.

Georgia’s accession to the European Union has been halted, and some of the bloc’s financial support to the South Caucasus country has been frozen after the Georgian authorities adopted a law on foreign agents that critics feared would curb democratic freedoms.