The Minister of Education and Science of Georgia, Giorgi Amilakhvari, is currently on a working visit to Brussels, the Kingdom of Belgium, meeting the EU officials. Within the framework of his visit, Minister Amilakhvari opened the second Joint Committee Meeting (JCM) under the Horizon Europe Association Agreement between EU and Georgia, addressing the JCM participants and he emphasized the importance of Horizon Europe in strengthening and modernizing the science and innovation sector in Georgia.

Giorgi Amilakhvari: "In my capacity as the Minister of Education and Science of Georgia, today I have started the first working visit to Brussels. It is crucial that we make every effort to align and fully integrate Georgia’s education, science, research and innovation sectors with the education, research and innovation areas of the European Union.

And precisely, with a view to enhancing our cooperation in this direction, we held a meeting with Marc Lemaitre, Director-General  of Directorate-General for Research and Development of the European Commission.

I would like to stress  that Georgia’s participation in Horizon Europe Program and the support structure, that have been functioning in Georgia earned sufficiently high appraisal. It is one of our priorities to transform Georgia into the regional hub for research and innovation.

During the meeting we also discussed the joint future plans. I informed our European colleagues about Georgia’s intention to  invest more in research and innovation, because we believe that creation of new knowledge is a crucial component, bringing significant impact on the development of education sector. 

At the meeting, we reaffirmed our strong committment to intensify close cooperation with our EU counterparts.  We are pleased to say that today,  our European colleagues also reiterated their full support to that direction."

The participants of the meeting also discussed the issues of furthering cooperation between Georgia and the European Union and outlined future plans for the deeper and more comprehensive integration of the Georgian scientific community into the European research and education area.