Speaker Papuashvili: European Parliament must first crawl out of a ‘civilisational abyss’ for its words to carry weight

“It has become difficult to take the European Parliament and its resolutions seriously,” Shalva Papuashvili, Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, told journalists.

According to him, the European Parliament has now adopted its ninth resolution carrying a hostile subtext towards the Georgian people.

“Nothing is surprising about it any more. We have seen that autumn and spring are the seasons when anti-Georgian groups suffer flare-ups. On the one hand, there is the EPP, the party that still considers Saakashvili the chief democrat, a party grouping that finds itself in an abyss of values. On the other hand, we once again see post-Soviet leaders: Gorbachev’s comrade-in-arms Juknevičienė, Germans from Astrakhan and so on, people who carry a purely Soviet mentality. So nothing is surprising here. We have now seen nine such resolutions demanding the imposition of sanctions, and this is the third resolution in which I have read my own name,” Shalva Papuashvili said.

He said that the European Parliament is in a civilisational abyss.

“We should look at it this way: we talk about the European Union being driven towards a civilisational abyss. In the case of the European Parliament, it is already there. The European Parliament is in a civilisational abyss and is speaking to us from there. The European Parliament must first climb out of this civilisational abyss before its rhetoric can hold any value. It is a carbon copy of the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies; the aesthetics are the same. You can still find the Congress of People’s Deputies of May 1989, after 9 April, on the internet today. Just as Georgians were reviled in the European Parliament yesterday, so we were reviled back then by Russian and some non-Russian deputies, Soviet deputies. What should our reaction be? Just as the Georgian people paid no heed to the abuse from the Soviet Congress then, so we should pay no heed to the abuse from the European Parliament, to the contempt that some MEPs harbour directly towards the Georgian people. Rasa Juknevičienė simply despises us Georgians. You can tell from her vocabulary, her rhetoric, from everything. She regards Stalin as her personal enemy, and because Stalin was Georgian, she harbours this contempt for Georgians and has never been able to get over it. If the EU wants Georgia to become a member, it could never accept us with a European Parliament like this. We have absolutely no place sitting in the same chamber as these people; people who harbour outright hatred towards Georgians and use the European Parliament floor as a vehicle to spew that hatred,” Shalva Papuashvili stated.

The European Parliament adopted its latest resolution on Georgia on 8 October.