The first EU-Georgia High Level Transport Dialogue was held in Georgia's capital of Tbilisi on 29 January in order to further develop and expand the cooperation between the EU and Georgia.
Georgian Economy Minister Giorgi Kobulia stated that dialogue with the EU will assist the government in developing new initiatives, and in 2019 and 2020 “we will see a significant result of logistical and transport systems development”.
The European Union finds Georgia to be one of the key regional partners in terms of road safety. To this end, the EU offered to establish a Road Safety Regional Center in Georgia, which will manage the road safety projects in other countries of the region from Georgia”, Kobulia said.
Th European Commission's Mobility and Transport department shared this news via its official Twitter account:
Thrilled to kick-off the 1st High Level Transport Dialogue between the #EU and #Georgia, with @Economygovge’s Minister Kobulia. A promise made in 2017 comes true today to advance & further deepen our common #connectivity agenda to the benefit of our citizens and business. pic.twitter.com/Xm1uMSpldl
— EU Transport (@Transport_EU) January 29, 2019
The EU-Georgia High Level Transport Dialogue covered strategic issues such as:
The dialogue participants exchanged visions regarding the EU-Georgia cooperation in terms of transport and mobility.
We looked at large infrastructure projects…. at the ways that Georgia can strengthen its position as a country for the logistics and a country for transit”, said Henrik Hololei, the Director General of the European Commission Transport and Mobility, who visited Georgia on January 28, held meetings in the country and opened the economic conference ‘Georgia and the World in 2019’.
Hololei added that cooperation in the field of aviation was also discussed at the meeting.
“The aviation is the area where we have had the most successful cooperation since 2010 after the Aviation Agreement was imposed. The traffic load is increased by 10% every year. There are hundreds of thousands Europeans coming to Georgia contributing to economy and tourism”, Hololei said.