Swedish, Lithuanian and Latvian experts will provide assistance to the National Food Safety Agency in the process of adjusting the national legislation to the EU food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary policy. This assistance and other planned activities form part of an EU-funded Twinning project to the value of €2m, IPN reports.

In the launch event, the Agency’s director general Gheorghe Gaberi said the key objective is to strengthen the capacities to export agrifood products, in accordance with the EU standards and requirements of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. “The project is aimed at improving the Agency’s institutional capacities to efficiently manage all kinds of aspects related to food safety and at helping the agrifood operators meet the EU requirements,” he stated.

Attending the event, Prime Minister Pavel Filip noted that such projects create preconditions for consolidating the National Food Safety Agency and strengthen cooperation with the foreign partners. “This project will help us to align with the rigors of the Community acquis on food safety and to modify the internal control mechanism according to the principle “from pitchfork to fork”,” said the Premier.

Head of the EU Delegation to Moldova Pirkka Tapiola said the foreign experts come from states that have a rich experience in the field and are ready to share it. As regards the quality of products, the diplomat said work is yet to be done in the area of standardization and the National Food Safety Agency’s role in this regard is very important. Pirkka Tapiola is convinced that if the reforms are implemented and the standards are met, the Republic of Moldova will be able to offer only high-quality products to consumers.
 
The project implementation period is of two years.

Twinning is a European Union instrument for institutional cooperation between public administrations of EU member states and of beneficiary or partner countries. Twinning projects bring together public sector expertise from EU member states and beneficiary countries with the aim of achieving concrete mandatory operational results through peer to peer activities.