If Georgia really wants to get back on the road to the EU, to begin with, it needs to repeal the laws that the EU urges it to, but Georgia will also have to fulfill the nine steps that are required to move to the next stage of the EU accession process. The ball is really in Georgia's court, but to be honest, I think it will take a long time to restore trust with the Georgian government, - the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Georgia, Meline Arakelian, said in an exclusive interview with InterpressNews.

The diplomat noted that this particularly applies to the law on "transparency of foreign influence" and legislation related to family values, which are against European standards of human rights.

"Especially the so-called law on the transparency of foreign influence, as well as the legislation related to family values, as it is called here, are against the European standards of human rights, which Georgia is obliged to protect. The Foreign Influence Transparency Act has already proven to be very damaging to civil society in this country. The so-called family values ​​law is extremely far-reaching and opens the door to Soviet-style censorship. All this is actually confirmed in the legal conclusions published, for example, by the Venice Commission, which is a very authoritative body of the Council of Europe, as well as by the OSCE's democratic institutions and the Human Rights Office. They have made it clear how contrary to European standards these two pieces of legislation in particular are, and last but not least, in the past months we have seen a lot of misleading and hostile rhetoric about the EU from high-level officials in Georgia. All this has seriously undermined our confidence in the Georgian government's commitment to the EU path and true reforms," ​​the Diplomat said in an interview.