“How many times are they going to impose sanctions? Once, twice, three times - we’ve heard all of this, but this is about the country’s interests,” Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze said while speaking to journalists.

When asked what arguments the EU’s High Representative, Kaja Kallas, relied on in her statement in Brussels following the Foreign Affairs Council meeting - where she spoke about possible sanctions against Georgia - Kaladze responded that European bureaucrats “do not like arguments.”

“Statements about sanctions have been made many times, and I will repeat once again - when it comes to the country’s interests, we will be uncompromising. We will have a very principled position. We will defend Georgia’s interests, the country’s future, and the interests of the Georgian people. We are doing our job and implementing policies where the interests of the people and the country are protected. How many times are they going to impose sanctions? Once, twice, three times - we’ve heard all of this, but this is about the country’s interests.

In general, European bureaucrats don’t like arguments. They rely only on superficial messages, threats, and blackmail. We have been hearing threats from them for a long time, including regarding the so-called transparency law.

We are asking only one thing - why is this law a problem, or why does it contradict European values, when various European countries themselves talk about the necessity of similar legislation? When we adopted this law, you remember the kind of attacks we faced, and the same continues today,” Kaladze said.