The Parliament’s commission on social protection, health and family approved the bill to ratify the Minamata Convention that regulates the supply and sale of mercury. Under the treaty, the manufacture, import and export of products containing mercury and production processes that involve the use of mercury and its compounds will be banned after 2020, IPN reports.

The states that do not manage to comply with this ban after 2020 can ask to extend the period of compliance by at most ten years, exhaustively justifying the necessity of such an extension.

Given that mercury-containing products are not made in Moldova and there are alternative products that do not contain mercury, the ban on the sale and export of the products regulated by the Convention as of January 1, 2021 will not have negative effects on the national economy, said the authors of the bill.

By banning the import of mercury-containing products regulated by the Minamata Convention, Moldova will prevent the generation of dangerous waste. Among the products that will be banned are the fluorescent lamps and mercury-vapor lamps.