EU Ambassador: Mentioning dialogue by Irakli Kobakhidze was positive; However, ruling party emptied this dialogue of any substance

“This smear campaign should stop for the dialogue to resume”, said European Union Ambassador to Georgia Paweł Herczyński at the press conference following the presentation of the 2026 Enlargement Package in the European Parliament.

According to the EU Ambassador, the European Union is based on dialogue.

“Dialogue is part of our DNA. If you look behind me, you wil see 27 flags of the EU member states. We are constantly negotiating, and we compromise in order to find consensus. So, when listening to Mr Irakli Kobakhidze yesterday during his Euronews interview, I felt it was very poisitive that he was mentioning dialogue. As for the European Union, we are all for dialogue.

The problem is that over the last three years, the ruling party of Georgia has emptied this dialogue of any substance with democratic backsliding, with civil society under pressure, with political opposition threatened to be banned, with pressure on independent media, with smear campaigns on a daily basis attacking the European Union. What do you expect from the European Union to talk about? Do you expect serious representatives from European institutions to discuss the definition of the ‘Deep State ‘? Do you expect us to engage in a dialogue about the ‘Global War Party?’ Do you expect us to discuss the difference between the EU and the Soviet Union? This smear campaign needs to be stopped in order for the dialogue to resume,” he said.