Georgia “will open talks” on deep and comprehensive free trade agreement with EU “before the end of this year,” Salome Samadashvili, Georgia’s ambassador to the EU, said on September 12.

“This will be a very important step and we think that the major achievement this year [in terms of relations with EU] will be launch of talks on free trade agreement,” she told journalist in Tbilisi on a sideline of annual ambassadorial meeting.

For the next year, she continued, Georgia’s “major goal is to launch dialogue on visa-free travel with EU.”

Georgia-EU visa facilitation agreement, which simplifies procedures for obtaining visas for certain categories of the Georgian citizens, went into force from March, 2011.