Georgia has itself paid a significant price for its European aspirations. Such a statement the Ambassador of Georgia to the European Union made in the interview to the Diplomatic World Institute.

“We align ourselves with the EU"s Common Foreign and Security Policy and contribute to a number of EU Common Security and Defence Missions. Georgia cooperates closely with the EU agencies and participates in EU programmes. All this, together with the overwhelming public support for EU integration served as a good basis for the application.

The Russian aggression in Ukraine has made the need to state our belonging more urgent. To be honest, Georgia has itself paid a significant price for its European aspirations and now is the time to state where we see our future, to state that while the values on which the EU 3 stands are being trampled on the European continent, we stay loyal to those values. The scale of the war in Ukraine shifted the geopolitical status quo and made everyone - small and big countries challenge some of their foreign policy assumptions. We applied for EU membership, as a way to demonstrate to the world that our European future is what it at stake and it is time for decisive steps”, - said Vakhtang Makharoblishvili.