Analysis of the capacities of the Republic of Serbia to start negotiations in order to sign the Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACCA)

On Monday, 4th October 2012, a meeting was held at the premises of the Ministry of Finance and Economy (MFE) to present the analysis of the capacities of the Republic of Serbia to start negotiations in order to sign the ACCA agreement with EU. In addition to the MFE representatives the meeting was attended by representatives of the Accreditation Body of Serbia and Institute for Standardization of Serbia.

ACAA (Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products) agreement aims at facilitating the exchange of industrial products between the EU and partner countries that have signed an appropriate agreement with the EU. After signing the agreement, products listed in the agreement can enter the EU, whereas there will be no need to perform additional testing or conformity assessment activities, and the EU products can be imported by the ACAA signatories without additional testing or certification. In other words, a partner country is treated like a member state.

Stephan Helmprobst, GIZ ACCESS project expert, presented the results of the analysis of the capacities of the Republic of Serbia to start negotiations in order to sign the ACCA agreement when he presented the benefits of singing and applying the said agreement. He pointed out that Serbia made significant progress in terms of the transposition of the EU directives given that that is a precondition for signing the ACAA with the EU. This precondition implies full conformance of legislation in case of certain product groups and existence of infrastructure for its implementation (transposition of the European standards, national accreditation body signatory to the EA MLA agreement, established market surveillance mechanisms in this field, etc.).

It is also necessary for Serbia to define groups of industrial products for which it wishes to sign the said agreement and to continue transposition of the EU directives that have not yet been transposed into our legislation. Eight directives were transposed so far (Machinery Safety Regulation, Lift Safety Regulation, Regulation on Personal Protective Equipment, Regulation on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Regulation on Electrical Equipment Designed for Use within Certain Voltage Limits, Regulation on Technical Requirements for Design, Manufacture and Conformity Assessment of Simple Pressure Vessels, Regulation on Technical Requirements for Design, Manufacture and Conformity Assessment of Pressure Vessels and Regulation on Radio Equipment and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment) and it is expected that three metrology-related directives will be transposed (Regulation on Measuring Instruments (MID) , Directive on Non-automatic Weighing Instruments (NAWI), and Regulation on Testing  of Pre-packaged Products.