Meeting within the framework of the "Mobility Partnership" Initiative

The Minister of Justice of Georgia took part in the meeting of the Local Cooperation Platform in the framework of the EU-Georgia Mobility Partnership initiative on 9 June 2017 in Tbilisi. The initiative aims at strengthening cooperation with the EU by improving the mechanisms of migration flows management and legal travel, addressing at the same time the issue of illegal migration.

According to the Minister, the main theme of the meeting was facilitating legal migration: “Today we are meeting the EU Member States and European Commission with the aim to achieve a deeper understanding of the visa liberalization granted to Georgia by facilitating legal migration and put an end to illegal movement. This is important since those wishing to migrate illegally often fall victim to crime and misery in the destination countries, are subject to deportation from the EU irrespective of duration of stay and lose the opportunity to re-enter the EU area. Therefore our aim is to facilitate legal processes,” said Mrs. Thea Tsulukiani.

The Minister talked about the ways to promote legal migration, and underlined importance of facilitating tourism, educational programmes and circular migration.

“The circular migration means to support our competent labour force to travel to the EU Member States, expand professional experience in the most demanded fields that face shortage of labour in the Member State and return to Georgia in order to benefit the latter by transferring the gained competences back home. That’s why it is important to establish direct links with these countries, and today’s meeting is one of the instruments for this cooperation”, added the Minister.

The meeting was organized by the State Minister’s Office for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and was attended by Viktor Dolidze, the State Minster; Ambassador Janos Herman, the head of the EU Delegation to Georgia; and the representatives of the relevant EU institutions (DG Home, DG Hear, EEAS/EU Delegation to Georgia), embassies of the EU Member States – parties to the Mobility Partnership initiative, state agencies - members of the SCMI, partner international and local non-governmental organizations.