The decision on Georgia's membership application is expected at the European Council next week. Brussels has already opened up to enlargement as a strategic objective, but asks for guarantees on freedom of public opinion and the role of the oligarchs in the country.
Less than a year after the parliamentary vote, the ruling Georgian Dream party has regained support, cashing in on the European Commission's favourable recommendation for EU candidate status. A result that Patriarch Ilya II himself hailed as a 'result of the efforts of our people and the authorities leading the country'.
During rock group "The Killers" in Batumi, an incident revealed local population's impatience with Russian tourists. Which may not fail to influence in the election battle for the new Tbilisi parliament in 2024.
Today's headlines: Putin will not attend the G20 in New Delhi; Japan wants to sue China at WTO over seafood import ban after Fukushima water release; Anti-crime mayoral candidate wounded in attack in Nazareth; Georgian 6th-century monastery buried by a landslide.
Yet another hospitalization for a president of the Caucasian republic during a visit to the Kremlin. Over the past three years Moscow has proposed several "harmonization plans" of laws and political-economic systems to Sukhumi. The Abkhazians have so far put on a good face, partly in order not to lose the funding allocated by the Russian government, but always maintaining a certain distance and autonomy.
In the pro-Russian breakaway republic of Georgia proclaimed in 2008, there is a big debate about the need to write new textbooks on the contemporary history of the region. Former parliament speaker Kociev: "How can you rewrite it in the midst of a fist and knife fight?".
