Georgia's outgoing president urges EU to use more leverage to back protesters

BRUSSELS — Georgia’s outgoing president on Wednesday appealed to the European Union to press her country’s pro-Russia government to hold a new election amid a police crackdown on peaceful opposition protesters.

Tens of thousands of people have filled the streets regularly in recent weeks since the governing Georgian Dream party decided to suspend negotiations on joining the 27-nation EU. Police have increasingly used force and intimidation in their attempts to break up the rallies.

“Europe needs to find the leverage to act. If Europe cannot exert leverage on a country of 3.7 million, how can it expect to compete with the giants of the 21st century?” Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, in a speech punctuated by warm applause.

The EU granted Georgia candidate status for membership in December 2023, but put the accession bid on hold and cut financial support in June after the passage of a “foreign influence” law that was widely seen as a blow to democratic freedoms.

On Monday, EU foreign ministers agreed to impose visa restrictions on Georgian diplomats and government officials. They also weighed a list of Georgian representatives to impose sanctions on, but no agreement could be reached.

Zourabichvili suggested that this wasn't enough, and she urged the world’s biggest trading bloc to use its weight as Georgia’s biggest donor, biggest economic market and home to the South Caucasus country’s biggest diaspora.

“If we are honest, Europe so far has not fully lived (up) to the moment. Europe has, so far, met the challenge halfway,” she said. “Where Georgians have been fighting day and night, Europeans have been slow to wake up and slow to react.”

Former soccer player Mikheil Kavelashvili became Georgia’s new president on Saturday as the governing party tightened its grip on power following an election in October that the opposition alleges was rigged with Russia’s help.

“While European flags are being banned in Tbilisi, Georgians are still waiting for binding measures to come from Brussels and Washington,” Zourabichvili said, and she added that the street protests won't stop “until Georgia gets a free and fair election.” Some EU lawmakers held Georgian flags as she spoke.

“We either go to elections, or we go somewhere that we do not know, but that certainly will be a crisis that you will have to deal (with) in much direr conditions,” she warned.

Zourabichvili's appeal came on the eve of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels. A draft of their summit statement, seen by The Associated Press, suggests that no new action is planned, although the text could change by the time it's published on Thursday.

In the draft, the leaders express disappointment that the government has suspended the EU accession process until 2028.

They are due to condemn the police crackdown and say that “the Georgian authorities must respect the right to freedom of assembly and of expression, and refrain from using force. All acts of violence must be investigated and those responsible held accountable.”

Meanwhile, Zourabichvili said that new and dark laws are being "hastily adopted while people are on the streets, and nobody’s really paying attention to what happens in the parliament.”

“Everything already in Georgia is controlled by the one party, or one-man rule. It is difficult to distinguish what remains outside of that control,” she said.