According to Vakhtang Makharoblishvili, the Ambassador of Georgia to the Kingdom of Belgium, the removal of Georgia from the list of safe countries by Belgium may be related to certain technical or statistical data.

According to him, in connection with the mentioned topic, active communication is underway with various agencies in Belgium.

"16 of the 20 EU states recognize Georgia as a safe country. In addition, it should be noted that not all EU countries have a similar approach. I also note that this is subject to change and any state may be removed or returned to this list at some point. It is important that we work with our Belgian colleagues to find out exactly why this could have happened. I can say that we had active consultations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium, and the Ministry had a positive attitude and a positive recommendation regarding Georgia remaining on the list of safe countries.

Accordingly, such decisions are sometimes made on the basis of certain types of technical or statistical data. You know that last year, after the pandemic, we had a certain increase in the mobility of citizens, but I will add here that this year we have a drop in the number of asylum seekers," Makharoblishvili said.

According to him, similar decisions are made once a year, however, depending on the circumstances, it may be revised and some decisions may be made more quickly.

The Georgian diplomat spoke about the cancellation of the visa-free regime.

"As for the visa-free regime, I can tell you that it is not in danger, there was no communication from the EU regarding this. Moreover, the meeting of the Georgia-EU Association Committee is taking place today, and naturally, this topic would have been raised if there was any danger in the mentioned direction. I would like to point out once again that Georgia is generally considered a safe state by the European Union," Vakhtang Makharoblishvili said.

According to the Ambassador, the Georgian side had active consultations with both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as internal communication between the Belgian agencies, and probably, in the near future, the Belgian side will specify specific, possibly technical and statistical reasons.

The information is disseminated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.