“It is important for Brussels to return to the path of dialogue - we have always expressed our readiness for this. We hope that we will have an opportunity to restore dialogue with various EU institutions,” Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said in Brussels after meeting with the presidents of the Belgian Senate and the Chamber of Representatives.

According to Papuashvili, the meeting focused on relations between Georgia and the European Union.

As Papuashvili noted, “the European Commission’s decision in June 2024 to suspend dialogue with Georgia was a wrong decision, and to this day, we are waiting for the dialogue to be restored.”

“First of all, we discussed bilateral relations. There are close relations between our two parliaments at the level of committees and friendship groups. This is my second visit to Belgium - incidentally, my first official visit to Belgium as Parliament Speaker was in 2022.

We discussed the fact that in today’s turbulent world, when it is very easy to find grounds for confrontation, striving for dialogue and finding the points that unite us rather than divide us become particularly important.

In this context, of course, we discussed relations between Georgia and the European Union. We talked about how, unfortunately, the European Commission’s decision in June 2024 to suspend dialogue with Georgia was a wrong decision, and to this day, we are waiting for this dialogue to be restored.

Therefore, we discussed this issue with our colleagues. It is important for member states to work with EU institutions and convince the EU institutions that the answers do not lie in confrontation and conflict, but that the answers are always found through dialogue.

It is important for Brussels to return to the path of dialogue. We have always expressed our readiness for this. We hope that we will have an opportunity to restore dialogue with various EU institutions. We hope that our Belgian colleagues will also help us in this regard,” Shalva Papuashvili said.

According to him, the meeting with his Belgian counterparts also addressed global challenges and issues related to the development of the region.

“In this regard, it was important for our colleagues to hear, from our perspective, about the conflicts in our region, as well as the prospects we see and the importance of the South Caucasus and the ‘Middle Corridor’ in ensuring the well-being of the European Union, each of its member states, including Belgium, and their populations,” Shalva Papuashvili said.