Bosnia and Herzegovina's Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, Mirko Sarovic, has said that the Bosnian authorities have the full support of the European Commission to introduce countermeasures against Croatia regarding imports of meat and other products.
Last week the Bosnian authorities imposed a ban on meat imports from 53 Croatian companies. Local media on Sunday quoted Sarovic as telling the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA that the move was supported by the European Commission and that it would be applied not just to meat, but to other products as well.
"The Croatians are behaving in the same way. If you try to export so much as one kilo of meat to Croatia, you will see that they will request the EU number at the border. We are doing the same, because we want to be treated in the same way," the minister said.
Sarovic said that Bosnia and Herzegovina had a duty to protect its own producers, and that Croatia, before joining the EU on July 1, had unilaterally terminated its agreement with Bosnia and Herzegovina on veterinary services.
"Since they cancelled the agreement on their own initiative, there was nothing else for us to do but to apply Bosnian legislation, which says that, if no agreement exists, only products having an EU number or a number assigned by the (Bosnian) Veterinary Office may be imported into Bosnia and Herzegovina," Sarovic said.
Sarovic expressed hope that an agreement with Croatia would be reached soon, especially regarding milk exports so that Bosniak milk could be exported to EU markets.
