Members of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party made a series of critical statements in response to warnings from Germany’s ambassador to Georgia, Peter Fischer, that visa-free travel to the EU should not be taken for granted.

The issue of the visa-free regime, which Georgians have enjoyed since 2017, came up during Fischer’s interview with BusinessMedia.ge on April 17. In recent years the EU has toyed with the idea of suspending visa-free travel privileges for Georgians in light of GD’s increasing authoritarianism and pivot away from European values towards Moscow’s sphere of influence.

Echoing a recurring concern which has been voiced by several EU member states, the ambassador stressed that “nobody wants to punish Georgians … we love Georgians coming” but added that visa-free travel is a “great privilege”.

Fischer’s comments were made among wider remarks concerning Georgia and Germany’s deteriorating relationship in light of GD’s ongoing democratic backsliding and repression of civil society, measures the party have taken in an attempt to consolidate absolute power and crush nightly protests which began after GD suspended EU accession negotiations in November.

“Visa-free regime is for very like-minded countries that are free democracies, where human rights are respected… So we have to look is that condition still true or not,” the ambassador explained, adding that, if a country’s “foundation” changes, the EU is forced to reassess granting it visa-free access.

Hours after Fischer gave his interview, Georgian parliament speaker, Shalva Papuashvili, speaking on the Georgian pro-government channel TV Imedi, accused the German ambassador of arrogance, insisted there was no basis upon which the EU would suspend visa free travel for Georgians, and declared that the issue was being wielded “by a part of the Brussels bureaucracy” as a “tool of political pressure and blackmail” to win leverage over other countries.

“Is visa-free travel some kind of godsend? We also have visa-free travel for Germans, so what?!” Papuashvili continued, adding that, were the EU to restrict Georgians tourists’ access, it would be the bloc while would lose out from a financial perspective.

Sozar Subari, an MP from the People’s Power party, a GD splinter posing as opposition, soon joined in, stating that the Georgian people would sooner lose their visa-free privileges than accept the “anti-national and anti-Christian policies” that the so-called “deep state” is trying to impose on the country.

GD has frequently accused a subversive “deep state” network of European and Western leaders of attempting to interfere in Georgian internal affairs and using EU accession as a means of blackmail to force Georgia to adopt values that contradict the country’s national interests.

Further, vice speaker Nino Tsilosani noted that visa-free travel was a “comfort” Georgia earned under her own party’s governance (GD has been in power since 2012).

Yet, Tsilosani added, “if comfort contradicts patriotism, the Georgian people have always been and will remain patriots of their country”.

Members of the opposition, meanwhile, have warned of what could be lost should the visa-free regime be stopped.

In contradiction to Tsilosani’s claims, Mamuka Khazaradze, leader of the Lelo opposition party, itself a member of the Strong Georgia coalition, stated that visa-free travel to the EU was the “achievement of the Georgian people” not GD, and added that civil society would “fight and protect this achievement to the end”.

Georgia’s fifth president and opposition rallying point, Salome Zourabichvili, criticised GD for framing the visa-free regime as a threat to Georgian sovereignty, thereby downplaying the consequences of its suspension.

The EU Council announced in March that it was developing a new law which would simplifying the process of revoking visa-free travel privileges for any of the 61 countries currently benefiting from the regime – Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova among them.

According to the Council, the bill would “boost the EU’s toolbox to counter situations when visa-free travel is being abused or works against the interests of the EU”.

The draft legislation outlines circumstances in which countries may lose their visa-free privileges, which include cases of “a significant and abrupt deterioration in the EU’s external relations with a third country, in particular when it relates to human rights and fundamental freedoms”.