TBILISI, May 20 – Germany’s ambassador to Georgia has sharply pushed back at Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze after the mayor attacked Germany over a German city’s plan to freeze its 51-year partnership with Tbilisi.
Peter Fischer, Germany’s ambassador in Georgia, said Kaladze’s statement was another sign that Georgia’s government is moving the country away from the European Union.
“This is not how you enter the European Union, definitely not. You can take this advice from me as the ambassador of an EU member state,” Fischer told TV Pirveli, according to the channel’s Georgian translation cited by Interpressnews.
The row began after German media reported that Saarbrücken, a city in western Germany, was preparing to suspend all official contacts with Tbilisi after 51 years of city partnership.
According to Saarbrücker Zeitung, cited by Interpressnews, the proposal came from the office of Saarbrücken Mayor Uwe Conradt and was to be submitted to the city council. The mayor recommended freezing all contact with Tbilisi until further notice, citing political developments in Georgia.
Kaladze responded with what he called a “letter of condolence to the German people,” accusing German bureaucracy of serving the “deep state” and saying Germany was stuck in a swamp of economic crisis, crime, demographic trouble, migration problems, social tension and a values crisis.
Fischer said the Saarbrücken decision had not yet been formally adopted, but added that the city had its own democratically elected mayor and was acting independently.
He said the German government is concerned about democratic backsliding in Georgia and about the Georgian government moving the country away from the EU.
Fischer also linked Kaladze’s statement to Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s recent open letter to EU leaders, saying both carried the same message: that Georgians are the “real Europeans” while Europe itself is supposedly in decline.
“I do not see steps forward. I see steps in the opposite direction, away from the European Union,” Fischer said. He added that this causes concern and disappointment in the German government.
Political analyst Paata Zakareishvili also criticized the government’s tone, saying Kobakhidze’s open letter to EU leaders looked like a Soviet-style public letter aimed more at Georgian voters than at Brussels.
He said Georgian Dream uses police excesses in European countries, including the recent Copenhagen protest clash, to justify itself at home and discredit the EU. Zakareishvili argued that Europe’s strength is not that it never makes mistakes, but that it investigates and acknowledges them.
