Georgia’s Prime Minister meets with the Polish Foreign Affairs Minister (official photo)
TBILISI, DFWatch–Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili says Georgia will sign an Association Agreement with the EU ‘by spring’, according to plan.
He said this during a visit to Riga, where he met with the Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who said that they agreed if conditions are met and Georgia initiates the association agreement, the commission which is overseeing the process will undertake to have the papers ready for signing before the mandate of the commission expires.
“I hope [this] is another argument for the PM to persuade the Georgian people to make the sacrifices that will be necessary to modernize the Georgian economy and to make it fully compatible with the largest free market on earth, the EU,” Sikorski said.
The PM continued his visit to Estonia with a meeting with that country’s foreign minister, Urmas Paet. After the meeting he said that the plan is to sign the Association Agreement by spring.
“This is the plan that we have chosen. We told you the news yesterday that there is such an opportunity. We have the main meetings ahead with Minister of Economy and business representatives,” he added.
It is planned to initialize the Association Agreement in November at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius.
The commission, which Sikorski has mentioned, was set up in 2010 and it has five-year mandate which will end in October, 2014.
