“The United States and Georgia’s international friends are here to support Georgia’s efforts to join NATO and to join the European Union,” US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan stated on Thursday.

According to the Ambassador, joining those organizations requires having a strong independent judiciary.

“The United States and Georgia’s international friends are here to support Georgia’s efforts to join NATO and to join the European Union. To become a member of those organizations – NATO and the European Union – Georgia needs to have a strong independent judiciary. We have been working with Georgia very well for the last 25 years to help Georgia build a strong independent judiciary. That’s why we were so pleased to see Georgia’s political leaders negotiate and agree to judicial reform in the April 19th Agreement. And that’s what we’re asking for, is what they agreed to, what they’ve negotiated, what is important for continuing the judicial reform that Georgia needs to comply with those commitments in the April 19th Agreement.

I had the opportunity to discuss this with the speaker and with the Chairman of the Georgian Dream party this morning. Again, I think there’s a very good roadmap in the April 19th agreement. It includes pausing Supreme court appointments until there have been broad, inclusive multi-party consultations regarding ambitious judicial reform. The April 19th agreement was a pledge by the ruling party and the opposition leaders to ambitious judicial reform through a broad, inclusive multi-party process that has not happened yet,” Kelly Degnan stated.

According to Ambassador Degnan, the appointment of the Supreme Court justices for lifetime terms should happen after a broad, inclusive multi-party discussion of the requirements.

“That’s what the April 19th agreement is. That’s all we’re encouraging the parliament to do. The High Council of Justice has put nominations forward. It is now in the parliament’s hands, parliament’s authority to pause this process while they conduct the kind of inclusive consultations that they very successfully did in the electoral reform. This is not something that needs to take weeks, years, months. That’s something to be done and give to the benefit of Georgia’s judicial role, as I think was reiterated by Senator Shaheen and Senator Johnson in their statement yesterday, is to help Georgia building a strong independent judiciary so that it will be eligible for NATO and EU membership.

That’s what we’re here for, that’s what we’ve been supporting for over 25 years. The United States stands ready to continue to offer that support,” she added.