MP Makhashvili: Conditioning EU membership on severing ties with MAGA forces us to sacrifice our own security for someone else’s ideological war

MP Levan Makhashvili, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on European Integration, responded to remarks by EU Commissioner Marta Kos, saying that Brussels’ call to ban relations with the ruling political force in the United States (MAGA) is damaging to Georgia.

Makhashvili insisted that Georgia’s foreign policy must be driven strictly by its own national interests from Tbilisi, rather than becoming a proxy in foreign ideological wars.

“According to the latest opinion polls, public support for a number of European leaders is at a historic low. Major European nations are facing a systemic crisis of public confidence in their political leadership. Voters in these countries are demanding an affordable standard of living, border control, public order, energy security, decent jobs and peace. Instead, they are all too often served an endless cycle of geopolitical mobilisation, a wartime agenda, budgets restructured around military priorities, and the sense that decisions are being made not in their own capitals, but in informal back rooms. When a visible government answers to invisible centres of power, when a country becomes a permanent instrument of conflict, when slogans replace diplomacy, and when criticism is branded as “standing on the wrong side”, that is when legitimacy begins to crumble, and alienation among voters grows,” Levan Makhashvili said.

The MP noted that a quiet, internal geopolitical struggle is already underway within the transatlantic space.

“The European family is a civilisational choice for us, but being European does not mean blindly imitating the mistakes that French, German or British voters are today judging through the polls. These ratings reflect the fallout from flawed policies pursued by the political elites of those nations. This is a clear message from the public: peace, sovereignty, and human well-being cannot be traded against each other. Whoever sacrifices one for the sake of the other will forfeit the people’s trust first, and their own political future next. I would also respond to EU Commissioner Marta Kos’s statement, which states that countries aspiring to EU membership should have no relations with America’s so-called MAGA movement. In doing so, the Commissioner for Enlargement places the ruling political force of the United States in the same category as Russia, branding it an “adversary” and an “enemy” within the enlargement process.

This statement is unacceptable and directly harmful to Georgia. This is precisely the kind of reckless policymaking that has brought Brussels to its knees. Equating the two is a strategic political error on Brussels’ part; when you no longer measure a partnership by interest, but by ideological purity, sooner or later you will end up declaring even your own ally an enemy. That has already happened. A quiet, internal geopolitical confrontation is already under way within the transatlantic space: in trade, in technology, in spheres of influence, and even among candidate countries,” Makhashvili said.

He went on to say that Georgia cannot afford the luxury of being drawn into an ideological war between Brussels and Washington.

“Those telling us that the EU’s path runs through severing ties with MAGA are asking us to turn our own security into a hostage of someone else’s internal ideological struggle. This call is misguided also because it reveals weakness in Brussels, not strength. If the European project is so fragile that the American voters’ choice can shake it, then the problem lies not with MAGA, but with Brussels, and with the flawed policy that has shifted Europe’s focus from its interests to ideology. Georgia’s position is clear: Georgia will not yield an inch to those radical forces for whom destabilisation is a programme, peace is a problem, and Abkhazia and the historic Tskhinvali region are merely “traumatic memories” to be discarded. Georgia’s foreign policy will be decided in Tbilisi, not in the office of any commissioner, and it will be decided solely with the interests of the Georgian state and its people in mind,” Makhashvili said.