The 16th annual meeting of the TRACECA Intergovernmental Commission (IGC TRACECA) was held on 10 February 2023, in Tbilisi and was opened by Levan Davitashvili, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia.

The high-level event celebrated the 30th anniversary of the TRACECA programme’s creation and the 25th anniversary of the signing of the “Basic Multilateral Agreement on International Transport for Development of the Europe-the Caucasus-Asia Corridor” (MLA TRACECA).

The meeting was attended by official representatives of the governments of the MLA TRACECA participants, permanent representatives (national secretaries) of the IGC TRACECA Permanent Secretariat, representatives from Lithuania and Greece as observers and from Turkmenistan as a participant of the TRACECA programme, and finally representatives of international organisations and TRACECA partners.

During the meeting, the mandate of the IGC TRACECA Chairmanship was transferred from the Republic of Bulgaria to Georgia via a symbolic passing of the MLA, and the former was the first to express their well wishes to the new Chairmen. Moreover, the Working Group on the Digitalisation of the TRACECA Corridor was established.
Several TRACECA documents were approved, with the following ones deserving a special mention as they facilitate border crossing procedures and increase efficiency for calculating the volume of goods passing along the TRACECA corridor:

• The “Border crossing hotline concept”
• The “Methodology of evaluating road checkpoints in the new edition and for generating statistical data along the routes of the TRACECA corridor”
• the “Multimodal Transport Legal Framework”

Also as part of the meeting agenda, issues related to the development of multimodal transport, the facilitation of border crossing procedures, and development of maritime transport were discussed.
A memorandum of understanding was also signed between the Permanent Secretariat and the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing Countries, as well as a memorandum of cooperation between the Secretariat and the International Association “Trans-Caspian International Transport Route” (IA TITR).

Recently UIC and TRACECA reaffirmed their collaboration on the interoperable electronic consignment note, while discussing how data exchange is one of the 7 core competence centres of the UIC Freight department. A memorandum of understanding (between UIC and IGC TRACECA) was first signed in 2003 and constituted an important milestone for the EU-ASIA connectivity strategy. Initially, the focus was on assessing the route’s potential via regular market assessments, setting business priorities, identifying operational bottlenecks, and implementing soft and hard connectivity solutions. Currently, the tools developed by Raildata will form a basis for digitalising international rail transport with a specific emphasis on wagon message data and consignment note data. Other areas of expertise at UIC will likewise be leveraged to ensure the safe and interoperable transportation of goods along corridors, such as simplified and safe wagon handover procedures, loading guidelines for wagons, and operational rules for cross border transportation.

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TRACECA includes the transport systems of 13 member states unified by the idea of developing the international Europe-the Caucasus-Asia transport corridor. The Republics of Lithuania and Greece obtained observer status in the IGC TRACECA in 2009 and in 2018, respectively.