Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze suggested that the EU will open negotiations on the country's accession to the community in 2025. “I think that this year this (opening of negotiations - TASS note), of course, will not happen, but next year with a high degree of probability negotiations will open, especially since before that, the war will probably also end in Ukraine,” - Kobakhidze said in an interview with the First Channel of the Georgian Public Broadcaster.
Kobakhidze also called the EU’s statements about the possible abolition of the country’s visa-free regime with the European Union “absolutely fictitious.” “I am sure that no concrete steps will be taken in this direction, including due to the fact that such instruments have completely lost their effectiveness,” the prime minister noted. He cited the example of the process of assigning the status of a candidate to EU membership to Georgia, which lasted a year and a half and was often used to blackmail the authorities. However, the EU ultimately granted Georgia this status at the end of 2023, after which the opening of accession negotiations became a topic of speculation.
Relations between the EU, the US and Georgia began to deteriorate significantly after the Georgian parliament adopted the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence in May. The European Union has repeatedly called on Tbilisi to abandon the law, but leaders of the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party have consistently insisted that the purpose of its adoption was to ensure transparency of financial flows to NGOs in Georgia, some of which were trying to start a revolution in the country. EU leaders have repeatedly made statements that the process of Georgia's integration into the European Union has been suspended. Moreover, the country may take a step back and lose the visa-free regime with the EU
