Georgia to impose stricter regulations on granting citizenship to foreigners

Georgia is going to impose stricter regulations for granting Georgian citizenship to a foreign citizen. Head of the presidential administration Giorgi Abashishvili announced today that consultations are about to start with the Justice Ministry and the State Security Service in order to develop new criteria and approaches for exceptional procedure of granting Georgian citizenship, Agenda.ge reported.

"Until now exceptional procedure of granting a Georgian citizenship by the President was of very liberal nature. The new reality shows that there is an increasing demand on a Georgian citizenship so we need to be more cautious and improve our approaches”, Abashishvili said.

He added that demand has increased on Georgian citizenship after visa-free travel with the European Union came into force.

Georgian citizenship can be acquired by naturalisation. The decision to grant Georgian citizenship to a person is taken by the President of Georgia. The decision is authorised by a Presidential order. The exceptional procedure of granting Georgian citizenship may be applied to a foreign citizen who has made an outstanding contribution to Georgia or to the cases when granting a Georgian citizenship to the person is in the national interests of the country. these exceptional situations are prescribed in the Constitution of Georgia.

Abashishvili said that President Giorgi Margvelashvili wants more public involvement in the exceptional procedure of granting Georgian citizenship.