Assistant at the Ministry of Foreign and Internal Trade and Telecommunications in the sector of market inspection Lidija Stojanović said today that market surveillance should not be restricted only to the work of market inspectors, and that coordination with the Council for Product Safety and other relevant authorities is necessary.

Serbia is on the right track in terms of improving the capacity of the market inspection and other market surveillance authorities, especially customs, Stojanović told reporters just before the start of the two-day conference of the Advisory Group on Market Surveillance.

She attributed this improvement to the support of the IPA 2010 project “Strengthening of the Serbian system of market surveillance for non-food and food products”, and pointed out that the members of the Advisory Group on Market Surveillance were trained as part of the project.

As for the legal and institutional framework, with the completion of the IPA 2010 project, Serbia will be at the level of developed European countries, but there is still a need to work on its full implementation with the assistance of the Ministry of Economy which is responsible in terms of the legislation, said Stojanović.

The conference will discuss the use of risk assessment in market surveillance activities in the field of non-food products, the hidden costs of counterfeit products, and the innovations in the general model of market surveillance.

The event is organized by the UN’s Working Party on Regulatory Cooperation and Standardization Policies and the Ministry of Foreign and Internal Trade and telecommunications, with the support of the IPA 2010 project “Strengthening of the Serbian system of market surveillance for non-food and food products” and GIZ – Open Regional Fund for Foreign Trade Promotion in South-East Europe.