Parliament Speaker: EU Ambassador has no right to assume role of prosecutor in Georgia

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Tuesday strongly criticised statements made by Paweł Herczyński, the EU Ambassador to the country, regarding the possible sanctioning of police officers present at protest rallies.

In his remarks, Papuashvili noted that the EU Ambassador had no right to assume the role of a prosecutor in Georgia and decide on someone’s guilt.

“It is astonishing to hear such statements from Mr. Herczyński. I would advise him to reread the Vienna Convention [on Diplomatic Relations]. The EU has neither appointed him as a prosecutor here nor have we granted him agrément in that role. Such an approach contradicts the principles of the rule of law”, the Speaker said.

“It is unimaginable that someone unilaterally decides where violence took place, who committed it, and then issues sanctions accordingly. I don’t know if he sees himself as a prosecutor, attorney, accuser, judge, and executor all in one, but I think he has missed the point of what an ambassador in a foreign country means”, he continued.

Papuashvili further accused EU-funded organisations of involvement in violent actions and criticised the lack of transparency in the funding of the European Endowment for Democracy.

“Why has the EU Ambassador remained silent on where the funds of the European Endowment for Democracy are being allocated? The reason why the EU Ambassador and Brussels are still hiding where the funds of the European Endowment for Democracy are being allocated is that once it is made public, as happened with USAID and American funding, everyone will see that this money was going to violent groups, that this money was going to disinformation, propaganda, that this money was being spent on politics, and of course some people don’t want this to become public”, he concluded.