The issue has become even more complicated as the ruling Georgian Dream party in December elected and inaugurated Mikheil Kavelashvili as the president of the country. It was the first indirect election of the largely ceremonial head of state in the South Caucasus republic after constitutional changes in did away with a direct public vote. The European Parliament, in late November , overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for fresh Georgian elections and rejected the parliament that subsequently elected Kavelashvili.
Deep Background: For the Council of the EU, the most powerful part of the bloc where the 27 EU member states sit, the situation is less clear cut. Operating by consensus on foreign policy matters, the room is divided by countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, which rushed to congratulate Georgian Dream directly in late October , and hawks such as Estonia and Lithuania.
Speaking to several EU officials on background, it appears as if they would prefer to just kick the can down the road on Kavelashvili and not have to deal with Georgia at all at the moment. Nobody wants to say anything, nobody wants to touch it, and nobody definitely wants to put anything on paper". A second diplomat I spoke to was even blunter, saying that "we are not taking steps on this right now but, at some point, we will have to face questions on this".
We will try to keep the line [on] limiting contact with the president and new government as much as possible. But I am afraid with time it will not be possible".
Many EU officials note that the bloc currently only engages with Georgia on a technical level in order to "depoliticize" the situation, but no one knows how long this will go on. One is the reading of what happened during the controversial parliamentary elections last year. We still talk about irregularities. The second issue is that the EU has a lot going on. When EU foreign ministers met in Brussels for their first council of the year on January 27, they discussed Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East, and then how to deal with the new U.
