“Shalva Papuashvili is working to ensure that we do not enter the European Union; he goes to sleep with that idea and wakes up with that idea. He wakes up and immediately starts cursing the EU,” said the head of the Liberal Academy, Lasha Tugushi, on the TV program “Reziume” on PalitraNews, responding to recent statements by Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili about the European Union.

Tugushi described Papuashvili’s statements as “unserious” and “fabricated.”

“Such speeches, especially in this form, saying that there was inequality in the Soviet Union, means working on discreditation. The Speaker of Parliament is working, and his only job seems to be repeating the same message: that ‘the EU is the Soviet Union’ and that ‘the EU is against the Georgian Church.’ And he tells others to ‘drink cold water.’ I think they should drink cold water themselves, because in Europe no one cares at all what such people say.

They say that [in the EU] ‘they are against the Church, against identity, they want to enslave us,’ etc. All of this is unserious in the sense that it is unsubstantiated and fabricated. Shalva Papuashvili is working so that Georgia does not join the EU and to negatively change public opinion.

All countries in Europe are rushing toward the European Union because it is an excellent system in every respect. Of course, it may have some problems—only God is without problems. No country on the European continent tells such fairy tales. Shalva Papuashvili is working so that we do not enter the EU; he goes to sleep and wakes up with that idea. He wakes up and immediately starts cursing the EU. What he says is already not even embarrassing; it is no longer even funny—these absurd, bizarre ideas,” Tugushi said.

For context, Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili responded to EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos’s statement that veto rights for new EU members would be restricted.

According to Papuashvili: “They have been gradually conditioning us, and they are still conditioning us to accept the idea that, if we become an EU member, we will be a second-class nation within the EU.”

He also said that “it turns out Georgia must not only stand ‘on one leg’ to enter the EU, but also after joining.”