Kobakhidze Rejects EU Call for Candidate Countries to Cut MAGA Ties
By Messenger Staff
Friday, September 11, 2026
Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on Thursday criticized European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos after she said EU candidate countries should cut ties with Donald Trump's MAGA movement to advance toward membership.
"Such initiatives are very strange; Europe already has countless problems," Kobakhidze said. He added that "it was strange, to put it mildly," for a European Commissioner to look for a pretext for conflict with the US at a time when Europe is dealing with so many other issues.
European politicians and bureaucrats would be better off concentrating on the problems around them, he said, with their full attention on settling relations with the United States and other countries. Instead, he said, their attention appears directed toward fanning conflicts rather than regulating them.
Kos made the original comments at an event hosted by the Centre for European Policy Studies. She said the EU must guard against candidate countries developing dependencies that would run counter to the bloc's long-term interests, naming ties to the MAGA movement specifically as a risk.
Georgian Dream Vice Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Maka Bochorishvili also rejected the proposal, describing it as a new criterion being invented for candidate countries. "The establishment of such criteria is laughable," she said, adding that European bureaucrats are often inclined toward self-isolation and call on others to follow the same path.
"Today we need more cooperation, more ties with everyone who plays a role in global politics," Bochorishvili said, noting that MAGA represents the governing movement of one of the most powerful countries in the world. Severing ties with such a movement, she said, would be ridiculous and laughable.
