The European Parliament's annual foreign policy report, approved on February 28, caused another attack on the West by the ruling party of Georgia. Upon the initiative of European Parliament member Anna Fotyga, an amendment was included in the project addressing the issue of pardoning the imprisoned former President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. According to the amendments, the European Parliament "reiterates its calls to release former president Mikheil Saakashvili on humanitarian grounds and encourages President Salome Zourabishvili to use her constitutional right to pardon him, which would contribute to reducing the political polarization in the country." In addition, MEP Fotyga emphasized that "Mikheil Saakashvili is a personal enemy and prisoner of Putin" and that the EP "cannot allow for him to perish in prison."
At the behest of MEP Fotyga, another issue was added to the document. The document strongly condemns the proposed construction of a permanent Russian Navy military base in the occupied region of Abkhazia. In response to the European Parliament's resolution, the Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, Shalva Papuashvili, issued an official statement, noting that "such inexplicable statements from Western politicians raise certain cognitive dissonance, when people start asking how the democratic West may still support a widely despised authoritarian figure."

"A huge gap of misunderstanding about Mikheil Saakashvili between his foreign patrons and the Georgian people continues to harm our foreign relations. Recently, the European Parliament adopted a resolution, which includes a paragraph where the MEPs call for Saakashvili’s early release from his legal imprisonment on "humanitarian grounds", whatever this may mean. MEP Anna Fotyga, the likely author of the amendment, mentioned that Georgia’s ex-president is "a personal enemy and prisoner of Putin". A few days ago, at the latest Munich Security Conference, Polish foreign minister Sikorski made a similar unfortunate intervention about Saakashvili, when, he too, called for Saakashvili’s release, referring to him as "a symbol of Georgia’s modernization". This is not new. We heard such calls before and we know that they are not leading anywhere. What authors of such statements completely fail to understand is the overwhelmingly negative attitude towards Saakashvili and his foreign patrons among the Georgian public. While Saakashvili’s lobbyists hail Georgian ex-president’s "deeds", for most Georgians things are diametrically opposite. Moreover, such inexplicable statements from Western politicians raise certain cognitive dissonance, when people start asking how the democratic West may still support a widely despised authoritarian figure. This also raises suspicions about as to whether hailed "Western values" are a mere ruse for promoting certain geopolitical objectives. The former and acting foreign politicians who vouch for Saakashvili, usually point to the latter’s role in democratic transformation, institution-building, and his handling of the 2008 invasion by Russia. In fact, these are the exact issues for violating of which Saakashvili remains a villain for most Georgians. Unlike Saakashvili’s artificially concocted international image, Georgians know first-hand what his regime brought to the country and to individual citizens. Mass violations of human rights, silenced media, terrorized business, elite corruption, arrogance towards own people, and the cowardly conduct during the war with Russia are how an average Georgian remembers Saakashvili’s almost decade-long heavy-handed rule. The myth that Saakashvili was in personal feud with Putin may represent an appealing idea for the European Parliament, guided on this issue by conservative East European politicians. However, facts speak differently. The Putin-Saakashvili confrontation is a part of the misperception, because Putin achieved most of his objectives in Georgia during Saakashvili’s rule, having occupied 20 per cent of our territory. This is what our people remember, not the rhetoric. Therefore, for us, certain foreign groups or individuals attitude to Saakashvili serves as a litmus test to distinguish the politicians who adhere to values from the politicians who only care about their narrow political objectives. Foreign politicians who were loyal to Saakashvili’s brutal regime but are now unjustifiably critical of Georgian Dream are friends of Saakashvili, not Georgia. It is important that our foreign friends and colleagues conduct relations with Georgia based on common values, or, at least, common national interests but not personal sympathies. The time has come for the European Union to officially distance itself from the slanderous allegations of MEPs. Our question to the EU is whether they share common values with Georgian people or MEPs’ particularistic interests guide them. We believe what matters is our common cause of Georgia’s European and Euro-Atlantic integration. We should look to the future",- the Speaker Papuashvili writes on social media. 
The Mayor of Tbilisi and the General Secretary of "Georgian Dream" Kakha Kaladze, also responded to the resolution of the European Parliament, stating that "in general, such resolutions are harmful to existing relations; they are simply insulting. We have seen numerous resolutions in which serious allegations were made, only for it to later emerge how these resolutions were adopted. Someone pays money, which is then disguised as lobbying, and these resolutions are subsequently passed. This is a very serious issue that damages the current relations with the West."