Export of Serbian food halted - Due to nonconformity of declarations with EU, some food producers forbidden to sell in Croatia

The moment Croatia opened its door to the European Union, the other door towards Serbia, closed for a number of our exporting companies.

The reason is that all food companies had to align their product declarations, since our laws are not aligned with EU.

There is no problem for the business who timely began preparing for this while the other ones lost, at least for some time, placement to the Croatian market.

There is a large number of these kind of products because Serbia is the only country in the region which does not have aligned daily intake of vitamins and minerals which are effective in the EU as of October 2012 while the Regulation on health statements is to be adopted no sooner than in the second half this year.

IHIS Nutricionizam, a part of HIS Naucno - tehnoloski park Zemun provides expert support in labeling products in line with EU standards and it is also working on the generation of enriched food and functional products.

Director of IHIS Nutricionizam, Dr Danica Zaric says they are receiving more and more calls from companies asking for an advice or help. There is the largest number of companies which operate as a part of Croatian companies but also large exporting companies. On the other hand, she stresses out that as of April, they have been working with their clients on preparation of declarations for their products which will be exported to the Republic of Croatia without problems.

(Danica Zaric)

- The biggest trouble spot for producers is labeling of quality product with vitamins, minerals and while a product must have nutritive and health statements. In most of the cases, they opt for removing health statement from a product. HIS Nutricionizam is opposing this kind of solutions because we, together with our client, in the right way and according to EU framework, point out the quality of their product – Zaric says for eKapija.

Where trouble sports emerge

- New regulation on informing consumers, already effective in EU, now in Croatia as well, is very strict. It happens that entrance of goods to EU country is halted or even worse, it is ordered to withdraw products from shelves. Or, as it is a practice in Germany, that a producer is penalized and prosecuted - the Director of IHIS Nutricionizam says.

Therefore she recommends producers to pay attention to requirements and standards referring to consumers' protection since, as she says, EU countries do not tolerate misleading of consumers.

- On many Serbian products, for instance juices, there is a label saying that certain fruit heals some organs in human body. If that is the case, these juices should be sold in drug stores. Also, our dairy products heave health statements that they are probiotics and with them they will no longer be allowed to enter Croatia. Statements on our products such as: cholesterol-free, artificial colors-free, gluten-free, preservative-free ... are used without any reason and in most of the cases they are wrongly used. EU does not allow it. There, it is clearly defined what and when something can be used - a collocutor of our portal says.

She mentions that every producer in Serbia must pay attention to products which exceeds EU limits, which also became a limit for Croatia.

However, there are some bright moments, i.e. producers who have started thinking about it on time. Foodland is among them, the company which timely prepared so Bakina tajba will be told in Croatia without problems.

- As an export-oriented company, exporting to more than 35 world countries, including EU countries, even two years ago Foodland was aligning labels for the Croatian market when Croatia was aligning declaration elements with EU regulations. Therefore, labels for Bakina tajna products have already been aligned and for sure we will timely change anything that is required - the company says for eKapija.

Otherwise, more than 60% of Serbian product goes to EU. That market with more than half a billion consumers requires alignment with European normative and standards, introduction of certificates and the product quality and control is implied as well. Although EU market is a unique one, there are special regulations which differ in countries.

As of January to May this year, the domestic product placement to EU countries is one fourth higher compared to the last year's results and totals EUR 2,5 billion.

Jelena Djelic