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Brexit Is Georgia's Chance to Push for EU Membership, President Says

Brexit Is Georgia's Chance to Push for EU Membership, President Says

(Bloomberg) -- Georgia must seize the opportunity presented by the U.K.’s departure from the European Union to push its case for integration leading to membership of the bloc, according to the country’s new president.

“We are looking at this situation with the determination to get the most out of it,’’ Salome Zourabichvili said in an interview in the capital, Tbilisi. “There is a logic that the country that has been steadily moving toward and wanting Europe can’t be treated less than the country that’s steadily moving away from Europe.’’

Brexit Is Georgia's Chance to Push for EU Membership, President Says

Georgia has sought EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership since Mikheil Saakashvili led the 2003 Rose Revolution that tilted the ex-Soviet republic toward the West and away from Russia. The Caucasus nation faces formidable hurdles in achieving these goals amid European reluctance to antagonize Russian President Vladimir Putin after the 2014 crisis in Ukraine when he annexed Crimea.

Strategically located on the Black Sea coast as a gateway to central Asia’s energy resources bypassing Russia, Georgia signed an Association Agreement with the EU in 2014 that includes a free-trade pact and gained visa-free travel to the bloc in 2017. However, it’s not on Brussels’ list of “candidates” or “potential candidates” for joining the EU next.

French-born Zourabichvili, 67, said she differs from her predecessors as head of state because “I am European.” She became Georgia’s first woman president in December. Her background already “plays a role’’ in meetings with EU leaders “because I talk probably in a different way to European partners’’ than previous presidents, she said.

‘Absolutely Ready’

It’s not clear whether cultural affinity will be enough.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg insisted in Tbilisi last month that Russia can’t stop Georgia joining the alliance. Even so, members are wary of a Kremlin backlash after Georgia and Russia fought a 2008 war over the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia months after a NATO summit declared Georgia would become a member. While it holds regular military exercises in Georgia, which has troops serving with alliance forces in Afghanistan, NATO has set no date for membership.

“Militarily, we are absolutely ready,” Zourabichvili said. “If we were to get the Membership Action Plan, everybody knows that we would be ready in two months.’’

Russia recognized the breakaway regions as independent states after the war, while the international community views them as part of Georgia. Despite “everyday provocations’’ by Russian forces based in the territories, “it has not changed an inch Georgia’s determination” to seek EU and NATO membership and “if that was Russia’s intention, then it’s a big defeat,’’ Zourabichvili said.

Billionaire backer

Born to a Georgian émigré family, she was French ambassador in Tbilisi when Saakashvili asked her to be his foreign minister after the revolution. They later fell out and she became a fierce critic of his role in the war. Backed by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party and the country’s richest man, she’s the first president elected under constitutional reforms that transferred most executive powers to the prime minister and parliament.

She plans to focus on how Georgia “gets over what I call post-post-Soviet syndrome and how does it become a really European society’’ on issues including workplace safety, inclusion of disabled children and food standards, Zourabichvili said. “We still have things to change in the mentality,’’ she said.

No Dialogue

Zourabichvili said she doesn’t plan to go to Russia’s annual Red Square parade in May to commemorate the Soviet victory in World War II, or to meet with Putin.

“You don’t get into any formal or informal dialogue with a country that occupies 20 percent of your territory if there are not very clear signs that something is changing,’’ she said “There’s no sign of that.’’

Georgia wants its allies to help restore a “very high political level” to Geneva talks on Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have declined into a “technical format” that puts no pressure on Russia, she said.

Meanwhile, Georgia will “continue exploiting whatever might happen with Brexit” to push at the EU’s door at a time when French President Emmanuel Macron is advocating a “Europe of different speeds open to everyone,” Zourabichvili said.

While they’re “realists” about any timing, a planned summer conference with EU leaders in Georgia’s Black Sea resort of Batumi will “be an excellent opportunity for us to put down some of our vision of where we are going,’’ the president said.

“Europe has always made progress through major crisis,” Zourabichvili said. “The stage is empty for us to fill it with whatever we can come up with.’’

To contact the reporters on this story: Helena Bedwell in Tbilisi at hbedwell@bloomberg.net;Tony Halpin in Tbilisi at thalpin5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Torrey Clark

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