Georgian Parliament Speaker questions EU’s role as security, global power

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Wednesday criticised the European Union’s declining global influence, questioning its ability to provide security guarantees amid what he described as reckless policies pursued by Brussels’ unelected bureaucracy.

Responding to a journalist’s question on the EU’s relevance to US military operations in Venezuela, Papuashvili delivered a wide-ranging critique of the European Union’s political, economic, and security role.

“France, an EU member state, is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The United Kingdom is a former EU member, and as a country considered part of Europe’s common political space, it is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Two out of the five permanent members are European countries, so how can one say what this has to do with it? Then what was the EU doing in Mali and the Central African Republic, where we also participated in EU missions?” he said.

The Speaker argued that the EU had lost its status as a global power and raised doubts about what EU membership implies in terms of real security guarantees.

“A few years ago, the EU was the world’s second-largest economy, I think even the first, and today we see where it has fallen economically as a result of its own misguided policies. Its economic growth is hovering around zero; there is economic stagnation. Several times, with a significant gap, the United States has overtaken it, even though just a few years ago their economies were on par. This is the result of their ill-considered, reckless policies. This is where they are economically. And we also see where they are politically. They are not even invited to the table. On the one hand, they say that the war in Ukraine is a decisive war linked to EU security, yet they are not even seated at the negotiating table in these talks”, he noted.

He attributed this situation to what he called the reckless, anti-European, and anti-democratic actions of unelected Brussels bureaucrats, arguing that global powers no longer consult the EU on major international decisions.

“First and foremost, it is Brussels’ reckless policy and the ill-considered, anti-European policies of its unelected bureaucrats that have brought the EU to this point, where today they are left pleading to be included in something, to be part of some negotiations. You remember that a few days ago Macron said he was ready to meet Russia, Putin - and what happened? I don’t know why they still haven’t met. Of course, the EU is an organisation with a population of over 500 million and an economy that remains significant to this day, and it is a civilisational centre. When we talk about Western civilisation, whom do we mean if not Europe? And the fact that Europe has no say in global processes is precisely the result of the reckless policies pursued today by Brussels’ unelected bureaucracy”, he said.

Papuashvili maintained that the EU had effectively reduced itself to an economic union, despite continuing to present itself as a political and geopolitical force.

“Just as Trump did not ask Congress anything - he explained that if he had, the information would have leaked - likewise, no one asks the EU anything. Global powers do not ask Brussels anything either. Brussels has done this to itself. Then let them say that the EU is merely an economic union, and that’s it. When they claim it is a political centre and a political force, I remind you that not only in the Western Hemisphere, but also in Africa - in Mali, the Central African Republic - with the participation of its members, in Syria, in North Africa, and in Venezuela, with the exception of just one or two countries, France’s territory is involved”, he noted.

“The problem is that EU and European leaders - Britain’s, France’s, and others - speak in confusion, saying they know nothing, that they need to clarify the facts. When asked for an assessment, they cannot even utter a word; they do not know how to assess it, because the EU as a global power no longer exists. Unelected bureaucrats have ended the EU as a global power. When we talk about EU membership, about our desire to join the EU, doesn’t that also imply security? If no one asks the EU or Brussels anything, what security guarantees can we talk about, when the organisation that calls itself a global player is asked nothing? So once again I say that the reckless, ill-considered, anti-European, anti-democratic actions of Brussels’ unelected bureaucrats have caused the decline we are observing in relation to the EU. As a global power, the EU no longer exists today and, unfortunately, it seems it will never become a global power again”, Papuashvili continued.

As Papuashvili noted, unfortunately, the European Union today was European only in name and increasingly retains fewer elements of European civilisation.

“We do not want membership in such an EU as the one we see in Brussels today. We want Brussels to change, to be democratic, to respect sovereignty and European values – the European values we speak of today, which are based on Christianity. European civilization is nothing else. Christian civilisation lies at its foundation, and when you falsify this ideology, when you create a false alternative ideology and persecute genuine civilisational ideas, then of course that EU is no longer Europe. Unfortunately, the European Union today is European only in name, and thanks to Brussels’ unelected bureaucrats, it increasingly retains fewer elements of European civilization”, Papuashvili concluded.