President Saakashvili said his visit to Poland and talks with Polish PM Donald Tusk ahead of high-level EU Eastern Partnership summit in Warsaw late in September, was “very important”, because Georgia was expecting “a serious breakthrough” this autumn on its path of European integration. 

“Poland will host Eastern Partnership summit later this month [September 29-30]; so this visit now in Poland, ahead of that summit, is very important, because we are really expecting a very serious breakthrough this autumn in terms of EU integration,” Saakashvili said.

“I think that this autumn will be a real European autumn for Georgia in a sense that this September-October, before the end of this year, we will have not simply ‘a one more step’, but a real breakthrough and here [in Poland] everything is already mature for that. For that reason I accepted invitation from our friend, PM Tusk, to arrive here in order to discuss beforehand strategy of how we will be acting jointly in this direction. Poles are very much supporting us, which is not a surprise of course,” he said.

President Saakashvili met with PM Tusk on a sideline of economic forum in southern Polish city of Krynica Zdroj on September 7.

Saakashvili did not elaborate about details of “breakthrough”, but this July Georgian State Minister for Euro-Atlantic Integration, Giorgi Baramidze, said that “soon, possibility in September, the date when talks on [deep and comprehensive free trade agreement with EU] may start will be announced.”

Baramidze made the remarks while speaking at a joint news conference with Stefan Füle, the EU commissioner for enlargement and European neighborhood policy, in Batumi on July 22.

Füle said at the same news conference it was up to EU-member states to announce the date when negotiations on this agreement would start. He also said Georgia made a progress on the key recommendations required for the start of talks on deep and comprehensive free trade agreement with EU.