On the 20th of October 2014, an informal meeting was held in Luxembourg between the Georgian Foreign Minister and her EU counterparts. The meeting was also attended by the EU's High Commissioner on foreign policy, Ms Federica Mogherini; the European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy, Mr Štefan Füle; and the European External Action Service's Deputy Secretary-general, Ms Helga Schmid. The meeting was held at the initiative of Latvia, which will assume the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2015, reports GHN based on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
During this meeting, Ms Panjikidze gave her European counterparts detailed information on the risks which signing the treaty Russia has offered may entail. As she noted, the EU Foreign Ministers expressed their concern over the fact that Russia seems to want to punish Georgia for its European choice.
‘The treaty the Russian Federation has offered to Abkhazia's occupation regime will be one of the main items on the agenda during discussions between the European Union and Russia,' the Georgian Foreign Minister, Ms Maia Panjikidze, noted after the meeting.
‘Our discussions focused upon the fact that this issue will become an important subject for consideration in relations between Russia and the European Union and in relations between Russia and individual European countries, and that the European Union must adopt a common position and take appropriate measures,' Ms Panjikidze said.
According to the Georgian Foreign Minister, both Georgia and the European Union share the same conviction that neither party should consider the possibility of using force ‘not only because of the fact that Georgia has pledged itself not to do so, but also because we consider that no problem can be solved by using force. It is also important to bear in mind that both the population of Abkhazia and the region's de facto authorities are critical of the proposed treaty, which goes against their future prospects and interests. Russia's interest, on the other hand, consists solely in the annexation of Abkhazia.'
When discussing the dangers and risks which signing the treaty would entail, Ms Panjikidze underlined the fact that doing so would not only undermine the format of the Geneva International Discussions, but that it would also call into question another important avenue for dialogue with Russia---namely, the regular meetings between the Georgian Prime Minister's Special Envoy for Relations with Russia, Mr Zurab Abashidze, and the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Grigory Karasin.