Author : Zurab Girchi Japaridze
Last October, in a speech to the Congress of European Socialists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: ‘We are the people of Europe, our voice must resound throughout Europe, from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, from Lisbon to Tbilisi‘.
Earlier this year, in August, at the International Strategic Forum attended by the leaders of the Eastern and Western Balkans, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, called for the European Union to take a ‘bold step‘ and accept new members by 2030.
In September, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi agreed with the deadline proposed by Michel, confirming that the European Commission was working towards it and welcoming the willingness expressed by Member States to mobilise and take a political decision on the accession of new members by 2030.
About a week after Várhelyi ‘s statement, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented her annual report, in which she also spoke of the need for EU enlargement and urged member states to approach the issue with the same zeal as Ukraine. ‘We cannot afford the luxury of leaving the people of Europe out,‘ she said.
It would be hard to find another period in Georgia’s history when the country was so clearly and unequivocally faced with an historic opportunity to ensure long-term security and prosperity. Last February, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainians’ heroic response changed the world. More precisely, it turned it upside down. Never since the fall of the Soviet evil and the gaining of independence has the West been so united against Russia and so convinced of the need to expand the European space.
In just a few years we can do what would normally takes at least 20-25 years and become members of the European Union.
In just a few years, we can make the leap and become an integral part of the $20 trillion market, bringing with it investments, innovations, jobs, and other benefits.
In just a few years, we can be fully integrated into the European scientific and educational space, giving our children many more opportunities to succeed in life.
In just a few years, we will be able to tell the people living in the temporarily occupied territories that we are part of the most civilised and humane area of the modern world, where the rights of every ethnic group are the best protected in the world, and that our coexistence is not a threat to their identity, quite the opposite.
In just a few years, we can take an incredibly big step towards ensuring the security of the country, and despite the fact that the European Union is not NATO, there has never been a historical precedent of anyone daring to launch a military attack against a member state of the European Union.
In just a few years, we can end 30 years of living in constant fear.
In just a few years, we can achieve that people can live fully in other places in this country besides Tbilisi, where they can do business and earn an income, where there are roads, water, electricity, natural gas, internet, and sewerage.
In just a few years, we will have reliable money (although we can do it sooner), with the European Central Bank (even with its shortcomings) behind it, not Nana Keinishvili*.
In just a few years, we will be able to start creating a better health system for our people here, so that European quality is not only available to the Patriarch.
In just a few years, instead of being illegal and undocumented, we will be able to work legally in any EU Member State, because we will belong there too.
In just a few years, we will be able to say with pride that we not only have an interesting past, but that we share all the best that humankind has created in the modern world.
In just a few years, we will be able to become citizens of a free, proud, dignified, self-respecting country.
In just a few years, we will be able to tell our children boldly that our lives have not been in vain; that we have been able to do what many previous generations were unable to do because of a twist of fate or mistakes; that we are leaving them a free, secure, and dignified country, integrated with the best part of the world, of which they can be proud and in which is worth living.
This is the so-called ‘window of opportunity‘ that is being openly pointed out to us from the West.
The only thing hindering this prospect today is a citizen with ‘Georgian‘ morals and a three-day memory, who is either already tied to the Russian government’s feeding trough or is secretly seeking it.
