Webinar on the Strategy of the Republic of Serbia for Chapter 12

The goal of the meeting was to present the current situation in the development of the Strategy of The Republic of Serbia for Chapter 12 within the project „Capacity building for the alignment with the acquis in the area of agriculture, rural development, food safety, the veterinary and phytosanitary policy“. The meeting was opened by the Team Leader Valter Miceli and Key Expert for Chapter 12 Biruta Amolina.

One of the main conclusion of the webinar that was held on September 30th, 2020, was that the development of the Strategy is a direct response i.e. promise of the Republic of Serbia to the European Union. The main goal is to develop a Strategy as a comprehensive strategic Government document through a broad participatory process.

The experts Olga Zorko, Zorka Prljevic and Slobodan Sibalic talked about the methodology used for preparation of the Strategy, including financial resources, as well as about the development of the administrative capacities human resources and pieces of training. Mr Sibalic also talked about the national legislation system and the implementation of the legislation in the areas of food safety, Placing on the market of food, feed and animal by-products.

Transposition of legislation through framework legislation and Secondary legislation was the topics of the expert Olga Zorko, while the expert Zorka Prljevic presented phytosanitary policy, Genetically Modified Organisms and Laboratories. Presentation on laboratories  shown very successful data on the number of laboratories and the analyzes they perform.

Some of the conclusion was that since 2019. there is an example of national legislation act showing that it is possible to use the reference to the EU legislation, which means that there is a more flexible approach to the transposition of the EU legislation into the national legislative system.

At the meeting it was concluded that the veterinary policy is very much in line with the EU, but the new EU regulations are to be taken into consideration as soon as possible. Since the strategy regularly updates information on the phytosanitary service, the good cooperation of that service with experts was emphasized.