The EU’s slogan “United in Diversity” is increasingly being replaced in practice by the motto “Do Not Deviate from the General Line,” meaning that you will only be admitted to the club if your voice serves a purely decorative function.

Speaker of Parliament Shalva Papuashvili made the remark in response to a statement by European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, who said that veto rights for new EU member states could be restricted.

According to Papuashvili, if such an idea is implemented, it would no longer be the Union that Georgia applied to join four years ago, nor is striving for membership in such a Union what is envisaged by Article 78 of Georgia’s Constitution.

He added that Georgia already has 70 years of experience as a nominal and unequal member of a union and has no intention of repeating that experience.

“Yesterday, European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos noted that the European Union is considering an idea under which future EU members would not enjoy the same voting rights as current member states.

At the same time, this would mean that once Georgia advances to the membership stage, it - like other new member states - would continue to bear obligations similar to those of existing EU members, while not enjoying equal rights. In practice, this means that the European Union would be able to make decisions on issues of vital importance to Georgia’s national interests without Georgia’s participation.

At such a moment, many will likely recall Brussels’ frequently repeated phrase: ‘Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.’ The idea currently being discussed within the EU amounts to abandoning precisely this principle - not only toward Ukraine, but toward all candidate countries. Ukrainians themselves have recognized this and stated that they would not agree to second-class membership.

These trends show that the EU’s slogan ‘United in Diversity’ is increasingly being replaced in practice by the motto ‘Do Not Deviate from the General Line,’ meaning that you will only be admitted to the club if your voice serves a purely decorative function. Indeed, such an approach would make decision-making much easier - there would be no need for difficult debates, differing positions, or that aspect of democracy which involves dissenting opinions.

The European Union has always been a rules-based project, meaning that all members are equal before those rules. Brussels’ idea of creating a legal segregation between countries radically changes this founding principle of the EU, transforming it from a union of equal nations into a union of ‘first-class’ and ‘second-class’ nations.

Therefore, one thing must be stated clearly: if this idea is implemented, it will no longer be the Union for whose membership Georgia applied four years ago, nor is striving for membership in such a Union what is envisaged in Article 78 of Georgia’s Constitution.

Georgia already has 70 years of experience as a nominal and unequal member of a union, and we do not intend to repeat it. If post-Soviet countries that are already EU members allow such a change to happen, it will turn out that their problem was not with the Soviet Union itself, but rather with who dominated such a union,” Papuashvili wrote.