In 2015 Moldova didn’t take the opportunities to export to the EU offered by the Association Agreement. Moldova’s exports to EU last year were larger compared with 2014, but their value decreased by 2.3%. This means that we exported more, but at lower prices, reveals an analysis by the Institute for European Politics and Reforms, IPN reports.
The analysis shows that a part of the goods exempted from taxes remain non-eligible on the EU market, such as the products of animal origin. Moldova pledged to adjust its sanitary and phytosanitary legislation to the EU’s, but made modest progress in this regard at a time when only one quarter of the measures defined in the national plan of action for implementing the Moldova-EU Association Agreement for 2014-2016 were carried out in 2015, with the rest being under implementation.
According to the experts, the reduced institutional capacity to implement new regulations remains an important challenge. There are no modern labs and testing kits and the export of animal origin to the EU cannot be yet started. “In 2016, the authorities should create conditions to take the opportunity to export products of animal origin to the EU, especially poultry and eggs,” said the Institute’s expert Iulian Groza.
Important steps were taken in 2015 to use the export quotas set in the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. However, some of the quotas were exceeded 2.5 times, while others remained unused. The low level of implementation of the sanitary and phytosanitary measures has a direct impact on the utilization of the export quotas.
To remedy the situation, the Institute’s experts suggest unblocking the European funds that are to be allocated through budget support programs, to outfit the labs with the necessary equipment and kits and to accredit them in accordance with the EU provisions, to immediately adopt all the normative documents stipulated in the plan of action and to amend the Association Agreement so as to insert the new directives that are to be transposed in the sanitary and phytosanitary area.
