With a view to the Georgian parliamentary elections of october 2020, Georgia Dream promised to ask for EU membership in 2024. This thread will try to analyse the obstacles the the country will have to face and solve before submitting its petition #GeorgianElections (1/n)
Georgia has proved that it's ready to make the reforms needed to join the EU, having improved its electoral law or implementing anti-discrimination laws, among others. So the political willness of joining the European Union is without any kind of doubt (2/n)
But the sceneario of asking to join the EU in 2024 seems over-optimistic for me. The country should before solve the territorial issues that Georgia has with Azerbaijan on the border demarcations and the rebel regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (3/n)
Georgia wants to control the whole David Gareja monastery complex (a old complex with important for the Georgian Orthodox Church) in Azeri territory and 1/3 of the border with Azerbaijan is still undefined (4/n)
A propose to solve the issue would be, in exchange of the monastery complex, Georgia could cede Azerbaijan some land of the part of the border that isn't defined yet (even ceding any Azeri majority village to Azerbaijan to definetively solve the issue) (5/n)
The situation with Abkhazia, South Ossetia and therefor Russia is more difficult. But the government should go under a complicated negotiation. Undergoing in a direct negotation with Russia and the provinces could mean a definitive solution (6/n)
That would mean that Georgia would receive again Russian tourists, improving the country's economic situation, and the country could focus on other topics, having solved the occupated territories issue (7/n)
In my humble opinion that deal would probably consist in Georgia recovering one of the regions that it doesn't control nowadays and would recognise the independence of the other. Georgia would also accept not asking to join NATO and Russia, the EU desire of Georgia (8/n)
The recovered region I believe it would be Abkhazia, whose status in that future Georgia would be of having a very important autonomy (similar to the Spanish comunidades autónomas), being allowed to modifie its taxes, administrate the health and education. (9/n)
Abkhazian and Georgian would be co-official languages, with Armenian or Svan also taught and protected when they have a significant speaking population and Russian as 2nd language at schools (with English as 2nd foreign language). (10/n)
I think it's more likely Abkhazia to unite with Georgia because it has a larger population of Georgians (20% versus 7%, without taking into account refugees), its larger and has more population. Moreover the Abkhazian government hasn't tried to join Russia yet (11/n)
This new status of Abkhazia would mean that Adjara would obtain some more autonomy (but not as much as Abkhazia). The rest of the regions (Mingrelia, Svanetia...) would also obtain a small level of autonomy (being able to promote regional languages like Svan or Mingrelian) (12/n)
But Georgia would recognise South Ossetian independence of South Ossetia. A referendum would take place in the territory on whether they want to join Russia or become independent (likely uniting with North Ossetia-Alania as a part of Russia) (13/n)
The country would recover the control of Akhalgori (part of the region of Mtskheta-Mtianeti), a Georgian-majority small town of 1,033 people where the refugees of the 2008 conflict would be able to be back (around 30,000 ethnic Georgians). (14/n)
Other clauses would be the compromise of Georgia of protecting the status of Russian (including it as the 2nd or 3rd language in its education system) and a respectful relationship between both countries. (15/n)
The propose agreement would achieve many things: increased land that Georgia de facto controls and the population of the country (from 3.7 million to 4 million), improve the economic ties with Russia, the international position of Georgia and unlock EU membership (16/n)
The question now is whether the Georgian leadership (and Georgian Dream concretely) are ready to act with pragmatism to improve the future of the country and achieve the dreamed EU membership (and before the acceptation of the candidate status) (17/n)
Thank you for having reached reading here and for your time. The debate is open and I'm open to hear all the opinions and debate in a respectful way. (18/18) #Georgia #Abkhazia #SouthOssetia #Russia #GeorgianDream #GeorgianElections2020
You can follow @Rguaraka.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: