Georgian PM: If EU is like Denmark example, ‘then what do we have to do with it?’

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on Wednesday said Georgia seeks membership in a European Union that returns to the values on which it was founded, criticising what he described as the treatment of peaceful protesters in Denmark.

Speaking on Imedi LIVE, Kobakhidze said Georgia did not want to join “such a European Union”.

“If the European Union is supposed to be like what we saw in the example of Denmark, then what do we have to do with such a European Union at all?” Kobakhidze said.

“When the German Ambassador presents such a European Union to us as something to aspire to, this cannot be justified in any way. We want a different kind of European Union,” he stated.

Kobakhidze said Georgia supported joining a bloc that adhered to the principles established in Europe after the 1940s, including human rights and constitutional democracy.

He argued that modern European values only became established in the late 1940s and warned that they could also be lost.

“We must remind European bureaucrats that what has existed for only several decades can also be easily lost,” Kobakhidze said.