Government passes CEFTA ratification bill

The Government passed the draft law on the ratification of the agreement related to the amendment and accession to the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) signed in Bucharest on December 19, 2006. The new unique free trade agreement in the South-Eastern Europe was signed as a result of the modernisation of CEFTA and withdrawal of Romania and Bulgaria from the present network of bilateral agreements. The signatories of CEFTA are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia. The new agreement consolidates and modernises the region’s “rule book” on trade and includes modern trade provisions on issues such as competition, government acquisitions and protection of intellectual property. It will provide for convergence of relevant trade-related rules, notably with regards to industrial and veterinary rules. CEFTA also includes the creation of an own mechanism of solving commercial disputes or using the instruments of the WTO. CEFTA-2006 might be enacted on May 1 2007. CEFTA was established by Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia on December 2, 1992 in Krakow, Poland. Slovenia joined CEFTA in 1996, Romania in 1997, Bulgaria in 1998, Croatia in 2002 and the Republic of Macedonia in 2006. Through CEFTA, participating countries hoped to mobilize efforts to integrate Western European institutions and through this, to join European political, economic, security and legal systems, thereby consolidating democracy and free-market economics.