Strengthening capacity of National Quality Infrastructure (NQI) and conformity assessment (CA) services in the Republic of Serbia Project, funded through EU IPA funds and national budget, has been presented at the Embassy of Czech Republic in Belgrade.
The presentation was participated in by Milos Petrovic State Secretary at the Ministry of Economy, Steffen Hudolin Head of Operations II at the EU Delegation to Serbia, Ambassador of Czech Republic to Serbia H.E. Ivana Hlavsova and Acting Director of Serbian European Integration Office Ksenija Milenkovic.
Project’s total value is €1 million, said State Secretary at the Ministry of Economy Milos Petrovic and added that IPA allocation amounted to €900.000, whereas national funding amounted to €100.000. He also said that Serbian partners were institutions from Czech Republic and that Czech experience, as an EU Member State, would be highly valuable to Serbia.
“The importance of the project lies in strengthening capacity of infrastructure quality, so it could become a real economy service and improve implementation of technical legislation through further harmonisation with EU acquis. Through this project, we gain knowledge, experience and skills which we would then use to strengthen capacity of our institutions so they could support economy and provide it with quality services,” Petrovic said.
He said that setting up of the system was one of the obligations on the road to EU, but should also be perceived as an opportunity to make Serbian products competitive and integrate Serbia into EU single market, all of which are strategic goals of Serbian Government.
According to him, Serbia has already aligned most of its legislation, standards and technical rules in the area of quality infrastructure with EU acquis, adding that so far, 95 per cent of standards have been complied with, whereas 75 per cent of technical rules were harmonised.
Steffen Hudolin said that the project would “help Serbian industry to become more competitive, expand to new markets, find new consumers, become a benchmark of a good practice.”
He reminded that the EU was the biggest donor in Serbia “with the investment of more than €3 billion during last 14 years. Our continuous support in the area of quality infrastructure will, in addition to this twinning project, be marked by a €4.5 million worth supply of specialised equipment to the selected conformity assessment bodies in Serbia in the near future.”
Hudolin said he was confident that “Serbia is willing and is working hard to remove barriers to trade, advance in the accession negotiation process and will certainly improve its administrative and technical capacities to master this field of competence” and added that the EU would continue to support the Serbia on this path.
Acting Director of Serbian European Integration Office Ksenija Milivojevic said that Serbia and Czech Republic had a long-standing successful cooperation in various areas.
“Among EU Member States, Czech Republic is one of Serbia’s most active partners, in terms of development aid provided in the process of European integration,” she noted.
Today’s session also stated that Serbian Ministry of Economy’s Twinning partner in this project was consortium consisting of Czech Metrology Institute, Czech Office for Standards, Metrology and Research as well as Czech Accreditation Institute.
It was also stated that implementation period was not limited in time, but would last as long as it takes.
