Mr. Shalva Khutsishvili, the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs attended the meeting in the Parliament of Georgia held within the frames of annual meeting of the Head of the Georgian diplomatic corps – “Ambassadorial 2016”.
The panel format meeting on the issues of European and Euro-Atlantic integration with the purpose of experience sharing was held in discussion mode and was attended by the representatives of Georgian Executive and Legislative Authorities.
Mr. Shalva Khutsishvili in his speech emphasized the achievements of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the process of implementation of Visa-liberalization Action Plan. According to Mr. Shalva Khutsishvili the Ministry of Internal Affairs was the leading agency in implementation process of 60% of the targets envisaged by the Action Plan.
As the Deputy Minister said, significant progress has been made in the field of fight against organized crime, both at national and international levels. "International police cooperation has been significantly developed. Currently the work on new international agreements is in progress. Our Police Attaches are sent to 11 countries that will ensure even more effective international police cooperation"- said Mr. Shalva Khutsishvili.
According to the Deputy Minister, one of the priorities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is to strengthen bilateral cooperation with the law enforcement agencies of partner countries. Georgia has already concluded Agreements on Cooperation in the Field of fight against crime with 26 partner countries. Also, Mr. Shalva Khutsishvili spoke about successful cooperation with the European Police Service (Europol). In the nearest future the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia will sign the strategic and operational level Agreement with the Europol.
The Deputy Minister stressed the importance of mutual recognition of driving licenses in order to allow the citizens of Georgia to apply Georgian driving licenses on the territory of other countries even after the expiry of the validity period of the Vienna Convention or to substitute Georgian driving licenses with local ones without additional obstacles and formalities. According to Mr. Shalva Khutsishvili, consultations on this issue are already in progress with Italy, France, Germany and Spain.
Also, Mr. Shalva Khutsishvili talked about the development of the capacities of the Academy of MIA, namely, he spoke about perspectives of transformation of the Academy into the international police training center and development of international training curriculum. The Deputy Minister stressed full support offered by the US State Department in this direction.
Mr. Shalva Khutsishvili introduced to the participants of the meeting the implemented, ongoing and planned projects of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, which will further strengthen preventive, crime response and investigative functions and increase the number of qualified personnel of the MIA. The Deputy Minister focused on the analysis based police activity, community policing, traffic safety improvement, emergency situations management, strengthening of border control and other important issues.
