ISET Policy Institute hosted a roundtable discussion on March 31 at Rooms Hotel Tbilisi, where participants discussed the impact of public spending on agriculture in relation to the value and destination of agricultural exports, particularly to the European Union (EU).

From a trade perspective, the most important aspects of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement, signed on 27 June 2014, including the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), are the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures and the food safety standards and technical regulations required for access to European markets. Georgia’s export to the EU is still rather limited, and one possible cause for this deficiency, amongst others, is the limited capacity to comply with food safety regulations and standards.

On March 20, 2019, Pati Mamardashvili presented at the meeting of the Agricultural Innovation Committee of the Georgian Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The meeting was attended by members of the academy, as well as representatives of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture.

On December 17, Salome Gelashvili, the Deputy Head of the APRC, presented a policy paper entitled “Challenges of Executing Technical Regulation of Dairy Products” to representatives of the dairy sector. The meeting was organized in the framework of the Supporting Food and Agriculture Business Support Organizations in DCFTA and SME Policy Implementation project.

On June 27, 2014, Georgia and the EU signed an Association Agreement (AA) and its integral part – the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). On July 1st, 2016, DCFTA fully entered into force. Until then, trade between Georgia and the EU was regulated by the Special Incentive Arrangement for Sustainable Development and Good Governance that contained a Generalized System of Preferences+ (GSP+) agreed to in 2005.