The plenary sitting of the Georgian parliament played the European Union anthem on December 15 at the opening.

Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili congratulated the Georgian people on the EU candidate status. He said Georgia deserved EU candidate status, and this moment would be remembered as a “turning point of a historical scale.” He thanked everybody who contributed to this process.

“Since gaining independence, the main goal of our national effort was to return where Georgia belonged historically. We need no proof of our belonging to Europe. We were the earliest European Christian nation, the eastern bastion of Christendom for centuries, and one of the earliest fully electoral European democracies. We were the nation transformed miraculously from the Soviet occupation to EU candidate status for the last three decades. We, the Georgian people, with unity and obstacles, are true heroes of this historic achievement, ” he said.

On December 14, the European Council opened EU accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova and granted EU candidate status to Georgia.

The European Commission recommended the European Council grant candidate status to Georgia on November 8.

Georgia officially applied for EU membership on March 3, 2022.