Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has fired the entire staff of its department of Euro-Atlantic Integration, according to the department’s former head, Tornike Parulava, who said he had also been let go.
On Wednesday, Parulava said he had been dismissed after 24 years in the diplomatic service without any formal explanation, adding that all the other members of his department were also let go along with him.
‘No one initiated any kind of handover process — the entire department was dismissed without anyone asking whether there was anything left to be done’, he wrote on Facebook.
In early May, it was announced that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was launching a reorganisation — branded that time as a ‘reform’ — that would affect its internal structure. The news came amid a wave of dismissals in various public institutions earlier in the year. Many of those let go believed they were targeted for protesting the Georgian government’s EU U-turn with public petitions.
At the time, Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili denied that the process was aimed at letting staff go.
However, after the process began, several ministry employees were laid off — the latest being Parulava.
According to him, the nature of the ongoing dismissals would undermine ‘the principle of continuity of the institutional memory built and developed over the years’. He also stated that the way the reorganisation has unfolded revealed the government’s lack of interest in the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration.
‘The units responsible for coordinating inter-agency and sectoral reform processes — and presenting those processes to Brussels — have been dismantled. It clearly indicates that there is no intention to continue these efforts, not even in the long term’, he said.
Over the past few days, some other department employees also announced their dismissals publicly. As with Parulava, the other department employees are among those who had joined a public petition by ministry staff condemning Georgian Dream’s suspension of the EU membership bid on 28 November.
‘I have no doubt that the so-called reorganisation announced at the ministry is connected to the joint statement made by a group of employees at the end of November, and is intended to purge the system of undesirable or unreliable personnel’, stated Giorgi Tsikarishvili, one of the employees, on 30 June.
In a brief written comment sent to OC Media, the ministry’s press office did not address the specific cases, instead referring broadly to internal structural changes.
According to the new structure, the Euro-Atlantic Integration Department was replaced by a Department of Euro-Atlantic Integration and Security Policy. The directorate that oversaw the former department — the Directorate of Security Policy and Euro-Atlantic Integration — has now become the Political Directorate for Security Policy, International Organisations, and Euro-Atlantic Integration.
The ministry told OC Media that after the reorganisation began, open competitions were announced for each position, which were open to all interested candidates.
‘Some ministry employees chose not to participate in the announced competitions’, said the press service.
One of those dismissed, Keti Pruidze — who worked in the Department of International Law — confirmed she did not apply. She said it was clear to her from the beginning what the real purpose of the process was: to ‘set an example’ by punishing employees.
‘I knew very well what this masquerade was about — to humiliate and break public servants with critical views, including myself’, she wrote on social media.
Another who declined to take part in the competition was Shalva Tsiskarishvili, who has a 28-year diplomatic career and headed the Department of International Organisations at the ministry.
Like his colleagues, Tsiskarishvili also considered the reorganisation a response to ministry staff’s public letter warning that the process ‘will inevitably lead to the systemic politicisation of Georgia’s diplomatic service’.
‘With this, my 28 years in Georgia’s diplomatic service are coming to an end’, he wrote on X, expressing solidarity ‘with all public servants who have been unjustly dismissed’.
According to an April report by the local anti-corruption organisation Transparency International — Georgia (TI), around 700 civil servants have been dismissed from a variety of agencies on political grounds since December 2024.
Shortly after the protesting petitions were published, Georgian Dream first proposed and then passed a law that simplified reorganisation processes in public institutions. In addition, ruling party leaders publicly condemned the civil servants who signed the petitions.
Mariam Bogveradze
This article was translated into Armenian and republished by our partner CivilNet.
