Secretary General of the Council of Europe (CoE), Alain Berset, said on Wednesday, “The situation in Georgia is not as good as we want.”

A member of the Swedish delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Azadeh Rojhan asked Berset: “Isn’t it the most appropriate moment now to launch the complementary joint procedure as a shared initiative, and to use your own words, accompany Georgia back on its democratic and European path?

CoE Secretary General responded: “We have a bad dynamic at the moment. We need to have more contact. We want to work more together, and we must also give a chance for the structured dialogue to work.”

“As you know, we are working a lot on the Georgian issues since the election. It was also the case before the election. After the election, I was, myself, with the delegation in Tbilisi in December to see what we could do to work together in the next months, to ensure that we will have a good intergovernmental collaboration, to ensure that we have a positive evolution in the country also concerning human rights and freedoms, and also to find a way to discuss laws. It was, first of all, about the so-called foreign agent laws.

I had good discussions there with the ruling party, with the opposition, with the NGOs, with the international community. Coming back, I have a good impression about the possible evolution in the quite complicated context that we had. Then, before, and then, we had the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) visit, we had the commissioner visit, we have the rapporteur office also visiting the country, and we had one more congress also visiting the country.

I received, at the beginning of February, an announcement that Georgia was not available to continue to work together to deeply amend or recall the so-called law on foreign influence. It was quite a long telephone conversation with Prime Minister Kobakhidze. He informed me about the government’s intentions to go back on its commitments taken in December. Since then, we haven’t had any more direct communication between us.

Now, the question is what should be done. After two discussions at the Committee of Ministers, I proposed to try to develop a structured dialogue with Georgia to see what we could achieve together, because the situation in Georgia is not as good as we want. It was really going in the wrong direction for many months, but it could be much worse. That’s the point. We have a bad dynamic at the moment. We need to have more contact. We want to work more together, and we must also give a chance for the structured dialogue to work.

After the vote that you had and the decision you had on the credentials with conditions, the evolution that we had, the signal was clear from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s side. Now we must see if it’s possible on the basis of this signal to see what we can do together. I will have contact very soon, I hope, with the Georgian ruling party and with the Prime Minister to see what we can do together to have movement in the right direction again.

About the question that you asked, I think it is clearly too early now to launch the next step, the next stage. Since you’re asking, you have the right also to receive a clear answer. I think it is too early now,” Alain Berset explained.