One day conference on “New technical legislation – Revolution for free trade and product safety” was held in Sarajevo today. The conference is in the scope of the project titled “Infrastructure of quality”.

The project is aimed at helping BiH institutions in implementation of new technical regulations of European Union, thus meaning that BiH economy is accepting the new approach to EU directives. The final goal is for all technical products that are manufactured or imported in BiH to be safe and secure. This will remove all technical obstacles for free trade between BiH and EU member countries.

„In the past, one state institution was verifying the entire process and now the company itself pronounces whether the product is in accordance with standards. There are also institutions that will verify that and if they found that the product is not according to standards the damages for that company will be enormous”, explains Assistant Minister for Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of BiH, Dragan Milovic.

The process of assumption and implementation of directives in BiH is financed in full by the EU with 1.6 million Euro. This is a complicated and lengthy process apart from assumption of legislation since it requires changing of the work process in some organizations and institutions.

Carsten Kudahl, Team Leader of the EUISP project in BiH stresses that a successful implementation of this project will offer most benefits to companies that are already exporting their products into EU market as well as those who plan to do so in the upcoming future.

„Likewise the laboratories and institutions for issuing certificates based on European standards will benefit from this project. It is very important now to intensify the involvement of private companies so they are prepared for the upcoming changes“, adds Kudahl.

Participants of the conference were representatives of BiH Ministry for Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, BiH Agency for Market Supervision and representatives of several domestic companies.