“There was a very strong request from the Brussels side that information should not be released to the media, but the meeting was not even finished and it leaked from Brussels — this is a disgrace,” said Levan Makhashvii, Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on European Integration, commenting on yesterday’s EU–Georgia visa dialogue meeting in Brussels.

According to him, “the meeting went as well as could be expected for a first meeting in the context of several months without relations.”

“There was a very strong request from the Brussels side not to leak information to the media, but the meeting had not even ended and Brussels leaked it, as it has always leaked during this period. This is a disgrace, even from Brussels, which begs you at the meeting not to take information outside, while you are not even out of the fourth floor and the information is leaking into the media. On the other hand, we also see what ‘Radio Liberty’ represents. It has directly turned into a propaganda mouthpiece for forces that are trying to turn the visa liberalization issue into a topic of internal confrontation, noise, and confrontation with their own government. Of course, they are trying to manipulate this issue. The meeting went as could be expected for a first meeting after months without relations. Positions were exchanged, and we will see what the next meetings show — whether Brussels is genuinely and constructively willing to engage, or whether it will again throw political arguments. This was a working meeting, and the Georgian side went through each law they were interested in in a legal and detailed manner,” Makhashvii said.

For context, “Radio Liberty” reported that “a source in Brussels describes the visa dialogue as fruitless.”

According to the report, when the Georgian delegation was asked whether they were ready to amend laws, they replied that they were a technical group and that the issue raised was political. Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Giorgi Tabatadze, after the visa dialogue with the European Commission, stated that he was “positively inclined.” However, according to a high-ranking EU official speaking anonymously to Radio Liberty Europe editor Rikard Jozwiak, the dialogue was “quite fruitless.”