President Saakashvili is in Athens where he attended a meeting of heads of national delegations of European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament.

President Saakashvili’s UNM party is an observer member of EPP.

Addressing participants of the meeting, Saakashvili said that results of the October parliamentary elections in Georgia and a decision of Moldova’s Parliament this week to dismiss country’s pro-Western government led by PM Vlad Filat “is a clear setback” for the European integration of these countries.
 
Meanwhile, 23 members of the European Parliament, most of them from EPP group, sent a letter to PM Bidzina Ivanishvili on March 6. Echoing UNM’s allegations against Georgia’s new government, the letter says that “the aggressive campaign to force opposition MPs to switch side by blackmailing or threatening them or their families simply stands in stark contradiction to European values”; the letter calls on the Georgian PM “not to step this way burying the European future for Georgia.”

President’s administration said that after Athens, Mikheil Saakashvili would travel to the United States to participate there in AEI World Forum, an annual event organized by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI).