“All three countries in the region know full well our respective roles and our worth. It is entirely without foundation if anyone entertains the notion of stirring up needless competition,” said Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili, speaking on Imedi Live.

“A few years ago, a senior official from the Brussels bureaucracy, I was still in parliament at the time, mentioned something to me in conversation: ‘We’ll replace you with Armenia now, and then you’ll see how things go.’ At the time, we were puzzling over how the bureaucracy could substitute Georgia with Armenia, by what logic, and where exactly this supposed replacement of Georgia was taking place.

Subsequently, everything became perfectly clear: what plan certain individuals and groups within the Brussels bureaucracy were advancing. It is frankly laughable. We simply cannot take it seriously,” the Foreign Minister said.

In her assessment, talk of Georgia losing its transit function is equally unserious.

“We have nothing to be envious of, and nothing to be anxious about. There are established routes, roads built over decades, that carry energy resources into Europe. To even suggest that these might somehow lose their significance is not a serious conversation. That said, there are efforts not only related to roads and transit routes but also within the European integration process to foster a certain level of competition among the countries in the region. That, too, is rather amusing.

All three countries in this region know perfectly well what our role is and what we are worth. Accordingly, if anyone has it in mind to fan the flames of unnecessary rivalry, that ambition is entirely without foundation and entirely without any realistic prospect of success,” the head of Georgia’s Foreign Ministry concluded.