Georgia President Salome Zurabishvili called on her French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to visit Tbilisi before the start of the election campaign for the parliamentary elections that will be held in the country this autumn.
"Let them come here!" - Zurabishvili said in an interview with the newspaper La Tribune de Dimanche, answering a journalist's question about what he expects from European leaders against the background of the debate in the parliament on the law on foreign agents and the protests against its adoption.
„Emmanuel Macron promised me almost from the moment I was elected in 2018 that he would come. He must do so before the start of the election campaign in September. “I have written to President Macron and I am waiting for him on Georgia's Independence Day, May 26,”, she added. In September 2023, Zurabishvili herself, as part of a European tour, visited Paris, where she met with Macron. Later it became known that the Georgian government did not agree to this, which is why the ruling party "Georgian Dream - Democratic Georgia" accused the president of violating the constitution and started impeachment proceedings, which could not be carried out due to the insufficient number of seats in the parliament for the ruling party to remove the president.
The president expressed the opinion that “no one wants a confrontation with Russia”, while at the same time declaring his desire to “free the Caucasus from the Soviet yoke”. and the influence of the Russian Federation. "This is very important for the future of Europe, including its security. This is the Black Sea, a transit zone for energy and communications. The fact that France is not present here is an aberration”, she said.
Zourabishvili expressed hope that Georgia will not be deprived of its status as a candidate for EU membership due to the adoption by the parliament of the bill on foreign agents. She acknowledged that her veto of the bill did not affect its ultimate fate, as the ruling party could challenge it. In this regard, she called on fellow citizens to stop the demonstrations and to “move to the next stage”, focusing on the preparations for voting in the parliamentary elections in October 2024.