Official Journal of EU publishes legislation on visa waiver for Georgia

Georgian citizens will be able to travel to any of the Schengen Zone countries visa-free in just 20 days.

New legislation lifting visa-requirements for Georgians has been published in the European Union’s (EU) Official Journal today.

It takes 20 days for a regulation published in the journal to come into force, meaning Georgians will be able to travel to the Schengen zone visa-free as of March 28.

For this, Georgian citizens will need a biometric passport. They will be able to travel to the Schengen states for a period of 90 days within any 180-day time period for purposes other than working.

Georgia has travelled a long path to achieving visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe. The EU-Georgia Visa Liberalisation Dialogue was launched on June 4, 2012 and the Visa Liberalisation Action Plan (VLAP) was presented to the Georgian authorities on February 25, 2013.

Since then Georgia has carried out a number of reforms and adopted or amended a number of laws in order to align certain policy and legislative standards with those of the EU.

Following this the EU concluded that the country had met all the benchmarks for the exemption of the visa requirement and the proposal for visa waiver for Georgia was published on March 9, 2016.

Almost a year from that date, Georgians have finally been granted the right of visa-free movement across the EU.