Georgian President Salomé Zourabichvili, who vetoed the controversial law on “foreign influence”, asked French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday to come to Tbilisi to “definitively remove the Caucasus (…) from Russian influence” . “Emmanuel Macron promised me practically since my election, in 2018, that he would come. He must do it before the start of the electoral campaign (the Georgian legislative elections, Editor’s note) in September,” said the president, in open conflict with the government, in an interview with the newspaper La Tribune Sunday.
“That France is not present is an aberration. I say this in very clear terms. I wrote to President Macron, I am waiting for him for Georgia’s independence day, May 26,” said Salomé Zourabichvili, who is a former French diplomat. “It is not only Georgia that is at stake, it is a question of definitively extricating the Caucasus from the mentalities of the Soviet yoke and Russian influence.”
Veto the controversial law
The pro-European president announced on Saturday that she had vetoed this text which sparked mass protests in this Caucasian country. But the ruling “Georgian Dream” party claims to have enough votes in Parliament to override it. Critics of the law, passed on Tuesday, see it as an attempt to distract Georgia from Europe and drag it towards Russia. NATO, the European Commission and the UN condemned it.
The text requires any NGO or media receiving more than 20% of its funding from abroad to register as an “organization pursuing the interests of a foreign power” and to submit to administrative control. “No one here wants to enter into a confrontation with Russia. This is very important for the future of Europe, including for a Europe of security. Here is the Black Sea, an energy transit and communications zone,” noted the Head of State.
This Sunday, France and Germany said they were “deeply concerned by the situation in Georgia”. In a message on Facebook co-signed by Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, Emmanuel Macron estimated that the law on “foreign influence” goes “against (the) European values”. “Our two countries have been fervent defenders of the European path of Georgia”, a candidate for EU membership since December, and “it is with deep regret that we take note of the decision of the Georgian government and of the ruling party to deviate from this path,” added the French president and the German chancellor.