Speaking to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an interview on April 28 during a visit to Prague, EU Enlargement Minister Marta Kos made a statement about Georgia.

“We could, say, roll back visa liberalization, but we would harm the majority of the population. Then, we have the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area Agreement (DCFTA). We could revisit that agreement. Then, Georgia still has candidate status. So, we could freeze it, create a stalemate like with Turkey. These are opportunities.

I don’t like it when the government doesn’t take the people into account. The [Georgian] people have a great desire to follow the European path. We will continue to work on this. I cannot accept that we may have lost Georgia, even if the government passes laws one after another that clearly contradict European values…

The easiest way is not to talk...But we talk to many other countries in the world which do not have a candidate status. Turkey, which has had its candidate status frozen since 2019, has resumed high-level dialogue… We had one [discussion] on the economy, we are planning another one on migration”, - she said.

When pressed if she thought something similar was on the cards for Tbilisi, she added: “I think that we should take care, perhaps not on the highest level at the beginning or perhaps starting at the lower level, but then to see how we could explore this”.