EU Technical Assistance Programme · Georgia
The EECP is an EU-funded technical assistance programme under the EU4Business/EU4Georgia framework. It supports Georgia’s enterprise development, business environment reform, and regulatory alignment with EU standards. Its labour component has become increasingly significant as Georgia’s EU candidacy has elevated the priority of labour law harmonisation.
Established under the EU4Business framework to support Georgia’s enterprise competitiveness and regulatory alignment.
EECP scope expanded to include support for occupational health and safety standards alignment with EU frameworks.
Programme expanded to support Georgia’s EU candidacy preparation, including regulatory impact assessments of EU labour directives.
SME compliance grant facility launched — supporting Georgian SMEs in meeting EU-aligned labour and environmental standards.
Delivered comparative EU minimum wage analysis for Georgian government — first systematic assessment of EU minimum wage frameworks relative to Georgia’s situation.
EECP is not a social dialogue actor in the traditional sense — it does not represent employers or workers and does not participate in the Tripartite Commission. Its role is technical: providing analytical capacity, international comparative data, and implementation support that Georgian institutions and social partners lack internally.
The 2024 minimum wage comparative analysis is EECP’s most significant labour market contribution to date. By providing Georgian government and tripartite partners with systematic EU comparative data on minimum wage setting methodologies, EECP gave the minimum wage reform debate an evidence base it previously lacked.
EECP fills a critical analytical capacity gap in Georgia’s labour policy ecosystem. The comparative EU data on minimum wage, OSH standards, and labour directive transposition that EECP provides is not available through any Georgian domestic institution. GILS works with EECP’s published analyses as an important data source for our own research.
The institutional sustainability question is significant: when EECP ends in 2026, who produces this comparative analytical work? GILS considers itself a natural partner for institutionalising part of this function — particularly the ILO-benchmarked law analysis and labour market comparative data that currently has no domestic home.
GILS calls for a structured handover plan for EECP’s analytical functions to Georgian institutional partners before the programme ends in 2026. This should include capacity transfer to GILS for the labour law comparative analysis function and to the Ministry for the regulatory impact assessment function.
How this organisation fits into Georgia’s broader labour market governance.