The Chairperson of the EU Integration Committee of the Georgian Parliament addressed the interparliamentary conference on urban policies in the European Union.

“First, I would like to thank the Belgian EU presidency for inviting and giving us this opportunity to participate in this conference today.

Georgia became a candidate country for EU membership last December and from this truly historic moment, we are embarking on the EU membership path. For the success of the European integration process, which we have to go through together with other candidate countries, we need to work together in many directions. Enhancing political dialogue is essential not only with EU institutions, but also with the EU member states at different levels and on different topics.

This conference is an excellent opportunity to discuss issues that at first glance are of a local nature, but common approaches to these local issues create a common framework that is significantly needed for the development of the proper European system.

Georgia with its cities is an ancient country with a complex history, mixed and interesting architecture, modern requirements and new opportunities that open up in front us. Numerous challenges that we have had to deal with throughout the last decades – conflicts, Russian aggression, energy or economic crises, and natural cataclysms, definitely influenced our urban development.

We managed to move forward towards modernization and doing our best to address the needs of our citizens, but we still need to do more to address modern challenges. Sharing experience on all the significant issues related to urban development has a special importance for us, being it financial issues, ensuring effective engagement of citizens or environmental issues.

While discussing these topics at the parliamentary level, we should focus on how to create the most equal opportunities for the development of cities at the legislative level, so that the cities are as compact, green, sustainable and well-connected as possible. In modern times, issues of local importance cannot be solved only from a local perspective. Technological development, globalization, social or migration aspects, of course, raise the need to have broader visions when addressing local issues.

For this, it is necessary to listen to each other, to define common challenges and share the best experiences, at the same time, to engage more with academic circles and specialists of different areas, since successful decision-making would be impossible without their engagement. Once again, thank you very much for organizing this conference and for choosing interesting topics for discussion”, - said Maka Botchorishvili.