Upon gaining independence, we started building a free country. However, there is still a way to go from independence to freedom, said the Prime Minister of Georgia during his speech at the event dedicated to the Independence Day.

“On 26th May 1918, Georgians firmly and loudly, for the whole world to hear, said that we want to “stand as a nation among other nations” again.

Although the first independence was short-lived, it turned out to be of fundamental importance for our further development.

In this short time, the Georgian people and their government created the foundations of a democratic, European state based on Western values, whose spirit and constitution were highly progressive even by today’s European standards.

The national independence and statehood that was finally restored in 1991 was based on the same Constitution and its values; The main goal of our country was to build a European state. In this way, in our time, we renewed the movement towards the supreme goal of all generations – towards the freedom of each citizen, the Georgian people as a whole, Georgia as a country.

Dear Friends, upon gaining independence, we started building a free country. However, there is still a way to go from independence to freedom. Independence means freedom from others, while freedom, as the great Ilia Chavchavadze teaches us, means when we are masters of our own destiny; This means building one’s own national, unique, independent path; Freedom implies a sovereign state that implements domestic and foreign policy only in the best interests of its own people, a state where the political and social rights of each citizen are guaranteed, the rule of law for the protection of eternal values and national interests; freedom implies an environment where the strength of each family – the main task of the government and, at the same time, is the basis of the state’s strength; Freedom implies a society that aspires not only to territorial but also to unity of values and substance, where our past, present and future meet”, - said Irakli Garibashvili.