Meeting with Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety

5 Jul 2017

During 5^th- 6^th of July, Mr. Vytenis Andriukaitis, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, undertook an official visit to Moldova. In this regard EBA Moldova has hosted a meeting with the Commissioner to which various Business Support Organizations and business people have been invited in order to address their issues related to food safety certification, export/import food safety procedures etc.

EBA President, Thomas Moser, and EBA Executive Director, Mariana Rufa, listed some of the legal amendments that helped improve the legislation in this area, specifically were mentioned the inspection controls, reducing the number of permissive acts, and others. EBA also presented some of the priorities for which ANSA have assumed a commitment for their implementation in such areas as: homologation of certification in case imported products of animal origin by using the TRACES system; enhance the Risk management based monitoring and supervision of establishments and authorization thereof, animal wastes treatment legislation and infrastructure development.

Mariana Rufa reiterated that certain actions have been already launched by Moldovan competent bodies, nevertheless it is important to accelerate the implementation of certain longlasting reforms so as to make Moldova attractive for investments and international trade.

EBA members shared their own experiences with the Commissioner, touching upon topics of compliant/non-compliant companies, animal waste treatment, access to finance, handling of returns in the meat processing sector, unfair competition, avoidance of tax evasion, control of goods by the border food safety inspectors, internal trade, and others. Vytenis Andriukaitis added that he is glad to contribute to solving these issues and reiterated that it is important to see where unfair competition happens and why some border controls in the EU countries happen selectively even for companies with international certification. He also underlined the need for transparency and public consultations in the legislative process.