Speaker: If you are not at the table, you are on the menu; stateless elements view Georgia as a platter to serve Brussels bureaucrats

“Brussels views candidate countries as items on a menu, and that is precisely how stateless citizens view Georgia too. Their sole ambition is for us to end up on the menu so we can spend our time figuring out who gets to devour us,” stated Shalva Papuashvili, Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia.

Papuashvili was responding to remarks made by opposition figure Gia Japaridze, who claimed that Georgia is no longer “on the EU’s menu”.

The Parliamentary Speaker noted that Japaridze’s choice of phrase merely echoed the condescending narrative employed by European Commissioners regarding Georgia and EU candidate states more broadly.

“This is how they view Georgia: as something to be served up on a silver platter to EU and Brussels bureaucrats. This was no slip of the tongue. It stems from the old adage: ‘If you are not at the table, you are on the menu’, meaning if you are not treated as an equal and lack a seat among the decision-makers, then others will decide your fate for you.

With this slip, he echoed what we have been hearing recently from certain European Commissioners, including Marta Kos. Firstly, they treat candidate countries as second-class nations, prohibiting them, for instance, from engaging with MAGA, Trump’s ideological foundation, even while they maintain such contacts themselves.

They somehow imagine themselves to be our legal guardians, assuming we lack the maturity to determine our own foreign relations. Furthermore, there is the declared concept that even if new members are admitted, they should remain second-class states stripped of veto rights; in other words, kept firmly on the menu.

Today, Brussels treats candidate nations as items on a menu, and these stateless citizens view Georgia in the exact same light. Their ultimate goal is to ensure we wind up on that menu, leaving us merely to debate who gets to devour us,” Papuashvili declared.