The ruling Georgian Dream party publicly signed the compromise solution prepared by the European Council President Charles Michel’s personal envoy Christian Danielsson.

The Chairman of the Georgian Parliament, Archil Talakvadze, made this statement at a special briefing recently aired on TV.

“Today, our country is facing serious challenges. Georgia is fighting a pandemic and the economic and social problems caused by the pandemic. The region faces a complex geopolitical situation. We believe the whole country should stand united about common challenges, while politicians should spend time on solving the country’s and citizens’ problems through joint efforts instead of fighting for their own narrow partisan interests. Unfortunately, a different reality is created in Georgia today. It is obvious that individual parties and politicians put the party interests above the state and society interests. The European Council President Charles Michel sent his special envoy to Georgia to improve the political situation in the country.

The facilitation of political dialogue was replaced with the mediation, the essence of which was that the mediator should offer the parties a fair draft agreement for all political parties to sign. The mediator prepared a document on behalf of the EU with the active involvement of the EU and US ambassadors and submitted it to the parties for signing. Today, the Georgian Dream publicly signs a document created under the auspices of the European Union and the European Council President Charles Michel and presented by the President’s personal envoy Christian Danielsson. We expressed our readiness to sign the document at the final negotiation meeting. Many opposition representatives mentioned that in their comments. However, we did not sign it before, as we expected reciprocal moves from the opposition and the ambassadors to hold additional consultations.

It should be emphasized that the EU did not include the issue of early elections in the compromise paper, which is another clear confirmation of the legitimacy of the parliamentary elections and the Parliament. It has been reaffirmed that the international community does not share the allegations made by the opposition about election fraud. The official findings of all relevant international institutions confirm the legitimacy of the parliamentary elections. We decided to sign the EU-sponsored solution to build trust with the public and international partners so that no questions remain whether a political agreement has been dropped because of the Georgian Dream.

The time allotted for additional consultations has expired, we have waited for the facilitator ambassadors, and this period has passed too. We see that the opposition is still unable to sign the agreement. Besides signing the document drafted by Christian Danielsson, we express our readiness to apply the 40% support principle in the forthcoming self-government elections.

We see the state of the opposition, how its radical part is trying to destabilize the situation, while the moderate part is looking for a solution in a way to keep its face. Georgian Dream will easily pass this test too and thus will facilitate the decision-making for the constructive part of the opposition.

We emphasize that this has nothing to do with the parliamentary elections and is done to show the public and our partners the Georgian Dream’s approach to state and public interests and constructive and healthy attitude towards the proposed provisions. The signing of the EU-sponsored document is a demonstration of our high responsibility to the Georgian citizens and international partners. Now it is the opposition’s turn. They have another chance to prove that they put the interests of the state above their party interests,” Archil Talakvadze said.

Georgian opposition parties that won seats in the Georgian Parliament of the 10th Convocation believe the 2020 parliamentary elections were a fraud. They have been demanding repeat parliamentary elections and the release of the United National Movement Chair, Nika Melia, and the co-founder of the TV channel Mtavari Arkhi Giorgi Rurua.

The second EU-mediated attempt to solve political crises in Georgia failed. EU mediator Christian Danielsson proposed a solution to political actors on March 31.