“Everyone in this house has recommended Mr Saakashvili to not enter illegally into the country. Mr Saakashvili decided to do so during an electoral campaign, which created a situation to try and solve that now,” MEP Nacho Sánchez Amor stated on Thursday.

European Parliament has held the debate regarding the situation of Georgia’s ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili.

“All of us in this chamber have seen polarization as a huge problem. In Georgia, this obviously has an impact on the situation of Mr Saakashvili. We need to remember this was provoked deliberately. Everyone in this house has recommended Mr Saakashvili to not enter illegally into the country. Mr Saakashvili decided to do so during an electoral campaign, which created a situation to try and solve that now.

However, my group retrace a position we have expressed in the past, we would like to see a suspension of the implementation of the sentence, so Mr Saakashvili can be treated medically outside of the country for humanitarian reasons, but also because we think that this will help to create a more normalized political agenda with lower levels of polarization and more political energy focused on the EU,” Nacho Sánchez Amor remarked.