Speaker: It’s important that Brussels return to dialogue, we hope to restore dialogue with EU institutions

“It is important that Brussels return to the path of dialogue. We have always expressed our readiness for this. We hope we will have an opportunity to restore dialogue with various EU institutions, and we hope our Belgian colleagues will also help us in this regard,” Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili told journalists in Brussels.

Papuashvili said he had met with the presidents of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Belgian Federal Parliament, with whom he discussed bilateral relations.

“I am pleased to be in Belgium at the invitation of my colleagues and to visit the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Belgian Federal Parliament. We met with their presidents. First and foremost, we discussed our bilateral relations. There are close ties between our two parliaments, including at the level of committees and friendship groups.

“This is my second visit. In 2022, my first official visit as Parliament Speaker was to Belgium, and we recalled that visit as well. We discussed how, in today’s turbulent world, when it is very easy to find reasons for confrontation, it is particularly important to strive for dialogue and find common ground that unites us rather than divides us. In this context, we discussed relations between Georgia and the European Union.

We also discussed the European Commission’s decision in June 2024 to suspend dialogue with Georgia, which we consider to have been a wrong decision, and we continue to await the restoration of this dialogue. Therefore, we also discussed with our colleagues the importance of member states working with EU institutions and convincing them that the response should not be confrontation or antagonism, but that the answer is always dialogue.

Therefore, it is important for Brussels to return to the path of dialogue. We have always expressed our readiness for this, and we hope we will have an opportunity to restore dialogue with various EU institutions. We also hope our Belgian colleagues will help us in this regard,” Papuashvili said.

Asked about the positions of the presidents of the Belgian Federal Parliament’s Senate and House of Representatives regarding the issues affecting relations between Georgia and the EU, Papuashvili said they were interested in hearing Georgia’s position and assessments on the matter.

“They were interested in our position and assessments on this issue. As you know, Belgium takes a very constructive approach to global challenges in general. The presidents of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Belgian Federal Parliament emphasized that parliamentary diplomacy, by its very nature, rules out a pursuit of confrontation. It is our responsibility to maintain dialogue and exchange views.

We also discussed the global challenges facing the world and the development of our region. I think it was important in this regard for our colleagues to hear, from our perspective, about the conflicts in our wider region, as well as the prospects we see and the importance of the South Caucasus and the Middle Corridor in ensuring the prosperity of the European Union, each of its member states, including Belgium, and their populations,” Papuashvili said.

For context, Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili is visiting Brussels with a parliamentary delegation. The delegation is headed by Papuashvili and includes Foreign Relations Committee Chair Nikoloz Samkharadze, European Integration Committee Chair Levan Makhashvili, and Procedural Issues Committee Chair Davit Matikashvili.