Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said he’s confident that Georgia’s progress “will be assessed adequately” at the NATO Summit in Wales in September and added that it would be wrong if he creates “false expectations” or starts speculating in advance about what the outcome of the summit might be.

He made the remarks at a press conference on June 4 after he was asked about German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s comments, who said after meeting with PM Garibashvili in Berlin on June 2 that she does not think Membership Action Plan (MAP) for Georgia will be on the agenda of the Wales summit. She also said that there are options other than MAP through which Georgia’s progress can be acknowledged in summit decisions.   

Garibashvili said that his government will not repeat “a huge” mistake of previous authorities, when “false expectations” were created over MAP, but eventually Georgia was left “disappointed” as no membership action plan was extended at the 2008 summit.

“We have completely changed that approach,” he said. “We said that we will not speak about results in advance. We prefer to wait and in the meantime to carry out active foreign policy and final results will become known later.”

“The Wales summit will be held in September. Before the summit I do not deem it expedient for the head of government to make predictions and to create some expectations in the public. This would be a wrong policy. We have seen it that it is wrong, when… false expectations are being created,” Garibashvili said.

“I think that Georgia’s progress will be assessed adequately; no one argues about it and all the members of NATO confirm it, including madam Chancellor as well. And what will be the final result, we should wait for it, when the NATO summit will be held. No need to over-dramatize it now.”

In April, 2013 then PM Bidzina Ivanishvili said that in 2014 Georgia should “undertake a very vigorous step and get at least MAP” from NATO summit. During his visit to the United States in February, 2014 PM Garibashvili said that NATO should grant MAP to Georgia at its summit in September as a reward for the progress made by the country.

When asked that he and the ex-PM were saying that, as journalist put it, “we are waiting for MAP”, Garibashvili responded: “It is clear that we are waiting. Wait for the results of the summit.”