NGOs welcome readiness to apply for EU membership

Keti Khutsishvili, Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation, presented the position of non-governmental organizations to journalists at a briefing today.

“Today we were going to call on the government to start working on the application for EU membership. We welcome that they themselves made this decision yesterday and we hope that this application will be forwarded today. This will be an important step for Georgia on the great path that is called European integration. We, the representatives of the civil society, welcome this step, but we would also like to point out that this is just the beginning of the road, it will be a difficult road, and the whole country, the government, and the opposition must walk this road together.

According to the NGOs, they welcome the Georgian government’s application for the EU candidate status.

According to them, several urgent steps are needed to be taken by the Georgian Dream to achieve a positive result. According to NGOs, the government must:

• Make reforms in the fields of human rights, the rule of law, and the independence of the judiciary

• Get back to commitments under the Charles Michel’s Agreement

• Urgently improve relations with Ukraine

• Make an application along with the trio (Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova).

It is necessary to create a designated structure in the government that will work on this, and we believe that the President of Georgia should become the face of this process. “It is well understood by all of us that for Europe our president is the most acceptable figure in the Georgian government,” said Keti Khutsishvili, executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation.