The Bulgarian Post
2006-12-11 10:28:40

European Union food safety experts have tightened rules on Bulgaria and Romania to restrict their milk, meat and animal exports into other EU countries from Jan. 1, the European Commission said on Monday.

The EU executive hopes the move will send a positive signal to Russia in the Commission's bid to resolve a bitter dispute between Brussels and Moscow over meat imports, Reuters news agency reported.

Russia has threatened to stop all EU imports of meat from Jan. 1 unless it receives assurances over the quality and safety of products after Bulgaria and Romania join the bloc next month.

A separate Russian ban on Polish meat products has also heightened tensions between Moscow and Brussels. Last month Warsaw vetoed the launch of talks for a new overarching EU-Russia agreement.

Under the new measures, Bulgarian companies that were authorised to export meat and milk products to other EU states after EU accession will now have to wait at least another year to do so.

The experts also agreed that establishments in Romania and Bulgaria using products of animal origin imported from non-EU countries may not export those processed goods into EU markets.

This is to ensure that processed goods made from non-compliant animal products are not inadvertently put on the market elsewhere in the EU," the Commission said in a statement.

Monday's announcement comes a day before a meeting of EU and Russian officials aimed at paving the way for an agreement before the end of the month.

If Tuesday's visit to Brussels by Russia's deputy head of animal and plant health, Yevgeny Nepoklonov, proves positive, then EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou could travel to Moscow to seal a deal on Dec. 18.

Russia is unhappy with the level of controls on animal disease in Bulgaria and Romania, which have had many cases of classical swine fever and bluetongue.

The new rules are in addition to measures already imposed by the Commission as part of the conditions for Bulgaria and Romania's membership.

Existing restrictions on exports of live pigs and pig meat from Romania and parts of Bulgaria to the EU due to classical swine fever were extended by the EU executive until September 2007.

In addition, dozens of sub-standard slaughterhouses and food processing plants in Bulgaria and Romania will be barred from exporting to other EU nations for some time after accession, as was applied to central European new entrants in 2004.

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