EU, U.S. Discuss Georgia In New York Amid Concerns About Ruling Georgian Dream's Anti-Democratic Steps

Senior U.S. and EU officials on human rights last week met in New York to discuss Georgia, TURAN's U.S. correspondent reports.

State Department's Assistant Secretary Dafna Rand and EU Special Representative Olof Skoog met on margins at the UN General Assembly to talk about the need for free and fair elections in Georgia, their impact on its EU aspirations, and concerns about ongoing crackdown on civil society, the Department said.

The move came as the Western allies had been signaling that their patience with the ruling Georgian Dream Party had run out, over the Georgian government's anti-democratic actions, disinformation, and negative rhetoric towards the U.S. and the West.

The EU has recently frozen Georgia’s candidacy to join the bloc, and the U.S. has imposed targeted sanctions on politicians and officials responsible for the backsliding on human rights.

In New York during UNGA week, the U.S. has also withdrawn an invitation to Georgia's prime minister to attend a reception for world leaders hosted by President Joe Biden, in the latest blow to a once-close relationship.

When asked by TURAN's U.S. correspondent about Washington's concerns over Georgia, Tom Sullivan, the State Department's senior policy adviser to the Secretary of State, said the followings: "We’ve been concerned for some time about the trajectory that the Georgian Dream party is taking its country on, and away from where we believe the majority of Georgians want to go, which is closer integration with the West, with the EU, potentially with NATO. And so we’ve been very clear, we’ve taken a number of actions to say that, in terms of our bilateral relationship as well as in coordination with European partners, that as they continue to take anti-democratic steps or steps that do not allow the people to express the – voice their opinions or determine their own future, that we’ll continue to calibrate our engagement with them based on that.  And I think that you saw that reflected in the engagements or lack of engagements this week."

Georgians will head to the polls on October 26 for a critical parliamentary election that will determine the country’s future.