Mr. Nikoloz Samkharadze:

I thank the Chair and his colleagues. It is a great privilege to meet the committee to talk about the situation in Georgia, our foreign policy priorities, and the challenges and problems the Russian occupation poses to Georgia.

I am the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee at the Parliament of Georgia. Today, I am joined by my fellow colleagues: Mr. David Songulashvili, who is the chairman of the economic policy committee in the Parliament of Georgia, and Ms Maia Bitadze, who is the chairwoman of the environmental and natural resources committee in the Parliament of Georgia. We also have here our great ambassador, Mr. George Zurabashvili, Mr. Nikoloz Khatiashvili, who is the chief of staff of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Ms Nino Shamugia, who is consul of our embassy here in Dublin.

I will start by outlining our foreign policy priorities. These are, obviously, integration into NATO and the European Union. These are the constitutionally guaranteed foreign policy priorities for Georgia because Article 78 of the Georgian Constitution, which was amended four years ago, says clearly Georgia will strive for membership of the European Union and NATO.

Georgia faces fundamental challenges, however, and these challenges are not new to us. Since we regained independence in the early 1990s, Georgia has been a victim of Russian aggression three times. First, in the early 1990s - 1991, then 1992 to 1993, and then in 2008. That resulted in the occupation of 20% of Georgia's territories and the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Georgians living in those areas. Today, we have 250,000 internally displaced people who cannot go back to their homes because of the ongoing occupation.

With the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the situation in our occupied regions has worsened. There are numerous human rights violations. There are numerous problems at the occupation line where citizens are kidnapped and illegally taken into custody, which poses a great challenge to the Georgian Government and Georgian society. Steps have been taken by the Russian occupying regime towards the annexation of Georgia's sovereign territories to the Russian Federation. What is happening in Ukraine comes from the same playbook and is a copy and paste of what Russia did to Georgia. Therefore, we are very worried by the developments in Ukraine. We are very worried by Russia's aggressive attitude and aggressive stance it has shown to its neighbours. Therefore, we firmly believe that for Georgian statehood, independence and sovereignty, there is no alternative other than joining the European Union and NATO.

Our number one national priority is the restoration of Georgia's territorial integrity. We have pledged many times to our society and international community that we will never resort to arms to restore our territorial integrity. Our firm stance is that the reintegration of Georgia's occupied territories should only be based on talks and negotiations and should be done in a peaceful way. We are very thankful to our society that the overwhelming majority of Georgian citizens support the peaceful reintegration of our territories and, therefore, there is a wide consensus in Georgia that the occupied territories should only be regained through peaceful means.

On integration into NATO and the EU, we believe that, today, Georgia is ready to be a NATO member. More than 80% of Georgia's armed forces have served under different NATO command missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and other missions. There is no question, therefore, about interoperability or NATO standards being matched by the Georgian armed forces. This has also been mentioned many times by our NATO allies. Unfortunately, we lack the political will from the side of NATO for further enlargement. Of course we understand that there are sensitivities related to enlargement and we understand the Russian factor in this context. We also understand that in the current circumstances, when there is ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine, it will be very difficult to make a decision about NATO enlargement.

What we need from our friends in NATO is a clear pathway for Georgian membership. As I said, we were promised this membership 15 years ago and we are still knocking on the door. NATO says the door is open but this has to become a reality soon. Otherwise, we see clearly that Russia has been attacking the countries that are not members of the security alliances. This was proven by the attack against Georgia and now against Ukraine. Exactly these two countries, which were promised NATO membership in 2008, are under attack from the Russian Federation.

Our second foreign policy priority is EU membership, and here we have made quite good progress in the past decade. Georgia signed the association agreement and a comprehensive free trade agreement with the European Union and we also got a visa-free regime with the European Union. This is not the ultimate aim of our people and Government. We want to become fully fledged members of the European Union. Last year, the European Council gave Georgia a European perspective and provided us with 12 recommendations to get candidate status. These recommendations mostly deal with changes to legislation and the adoption of action plans and strategies in different areas. I will list a few of them as follows: the improvement of the electoral framework, strengthening the democratic oversight of state institutions, fighting against organised crime, gender equality, the election of a new public defender, and so on. In all of these areas we have already made significant progress. Eight out of 12 recommendations have already been implemented and we are hopeful that, by the end of May or the beginning of June, we will be able to implement all 12 recommendations. Then the timeline for the decision is that the European Commission will make an evaluation of the progress of all candidate countries in the western Balkans and in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova and it will come up with recommendations for the European Council, which will meet in October. Then the European Council will decide on further steps in December.

As we speak, Georgia is the only country that has applied for EU membership but is still not a candidate country. All the others have already received candidate status, but the European Commission report clearly stated in February that Georgia is ahead of Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ukraine when it comes to our approximation of the European Union and the reforms that are needed to become a member. This report already showed that Georgia is well advanced in its reform path. We are hopeful that at the end of this year we will have a merit-based decision by the European Commission and then the European Council on granting Georgia candidate status and starting accession negotiations with our country.

I will give the committee a short overview of that. Georgia has been a frontrunner in implementing the association agreement with the European Union. The association agreement with the European Union is pretty much the same as the accession agreement because we have compared our association agreement with the accession agreements of the candidate countries like Montenegro and Serbia and almost 75% of the text of these two agreements and the reforms that need to be carried out are the same. As we speak, Georgia has already implemented half of the association agreement. That means that when we start negotiations with the European Union, we will not start from scratch but we will already have reached quite an advanced stage in certain areas and we will have a good opportunity to catch up with the western Balkan states in the near future. From our perspective, after the start of the accession negotiations, Georgia would need four to five years to complete negotiations. This is what we are projecting. Georgia has a most pro-European population. We had 80% support of the Georgian people for European integration and that has been a constant figure for the past 20 years. Georgia never had a government, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which did not favour European and western integration. All of the successive Georgian governments after independence have been promoting a pro-western course and foreign policy.

I refer to our economic situation and policy. Georgia is an open market country and we strive to have free trade agreements with as many nations as possible to make Georgia an attractive hub for investment. Georgia is the only country in the wider region which has free trade agreements with the European Union, Türkiye, all the former Soviet republics and China. Anyone producing a product in Georgia has access to more than 2 billion customers in the world and we want to expand this scope. We are in talks with South Korea, India and the United States to have similar trade regimes, meaning free trade agreements with these countries. Georgia is an important energy hub. All the major pipelines that deliver central Asian gas and oil to Europe run through Georgia, and this is becoming even more important given that the Russian aggression against Ukraine basically blocked the so called northern corridor. Most of the goods are now shipped from east to west through the middle corridor, where Georgia is playing a key role. We recently signed, to my understanding, a milestone agreement with the European Union on putting an underwater cable in the Black Sea, which will provide Europe with green energy from the south Caucasus and beyond. This will connect Georgia to the European grid, which is important, especially nowadays when Europe is trying to decrease its dependence on Russian energy.

I have sought to give members an idea of the problems and challenges we face on the one hand and about our aspirations on the other hand. We should also allow time for questions, which I will be happy to take. I thank members for their attention.