In the period 20-24 May 2019, a document examination expert from the Greek Police has been delivering training courses for the Georgian Patrol Police on the specific features of Greek travel and ID documents. This course has been delivered first at Tbilisi Airport, to be repeated afterwards at Kutaisi Airport and the Sarpi Border Crossing Point.

This course, organized thanks to EU funding and as part of IOM’s project “Sustaining Border Management and Migration Governance in Georgia (SBMMG)”, was devised in joint cooperation between the Embassy of Greece to Georgia and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, as a response to a growing trend of the abuse of Greek travel documents to try to enter the EU on inappropriate grounds. This concerns both third country nationals who use Georgia as a springboard towards Europe, and also citizens of Georgia attempting to secure long-term residence in Greece or elsewhere in the EU.

As such, this course is a good example of facilitating ever closer cooperation between border control officials from Georgia and individual EU Member States, thus ensuring that Georgian officials remain on top of the latest trends in document abuse and contribute to securing the benchmarks of visa-free travel from Georgia to the Schengen zone.