Now that’s the battle, this is not the end of the road that we are going to join the EU to get the candidate status, so it is a very important time for country, said the Presidnet of Georgian in the interview to Bloomberg.

“We are at very important place now, waiting for the decision of the European Union on our candidate status, which was awarded to Ukraine and Moldova a few months ago and we are awaiting for a similar decision before the end of the year. we have been given number recommendations of what to do to deserve this candidate status. We have been given a ‘European perspective’ which is no less important, because it means that all the discussions that were before about our geography, that we were too far away, are now ended and we are with the European perspective, but we have to deliver.

And that’s where this law comes completely out of the blue and it goes against everything that the EU recommends us to do, which is to involve more of civil society, to be more transparent, to allow for more insertion of the civil society in the political discussions about the European future. As it was taken by the Georgian population as an anti-European law and it was taken as such by our international partners, all of them, there was total unanimity amongst our international partners and total unanimity of the Georgian society, which showed from the streets for the third day now. As soon as the law was initiated, I declared publicly that I would veto it. I have supported the demonstrations that have happened in Tbilisi and finally the authorities gave in and withdrew, or have announced that they are going to withdraw this law. Which still nobody understands why they suddenly decided that it was something useful to be done at this stage.

Now that’s the battle, this is not the end of the road that we are going to join the EU to get the candidate status, so it is a very important time for Georgia”, - said Salome Zourabichvili.