The European Union funded Twinning project “Further Capacity Building in the area of Plant Protection Products and Pesticides Residues in the Republic of Serbia” was presented today. The beneficiary of the project is Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection.
The Project implemented by the Chemicals Regulation Division (CRD), Health and Safety Executive from the United Kingdom in partnership with the Central Institute for Supervising and Testing in Agriculture (ÚKŹÚŹ) from the Czech Republic and in close cooperation with the experts from Slovenia and Croatia. The beneficiary is the Plant Protection Directorate (PPD) of the Serbian Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection (MAEP). The Contracting Authority responsible for contractual issues and monitoring the implementation of the project is the Department for Contracting and Financing of European Union Funded Programmes, of the Serbian Ministry of Finance. The project is implemented under the decentralized management system..

The overall objective of this project is to ensure protection of human health, the environment and consumers within the Republic of Serbia.
In order to achieve project benchmarks and provide the best practices and experience, relevant implementing institutions from the Member States shall assist the institutions of the Republic of Serbia to align Serbian legislation with the EU acquis in the area of Plant Protection Products and pesticide residues. The goal is to bring the authorisations of PPPs in line with the EU legislative framework.
By providing training for the staff from the Plant Protection Directorate and staff from selected institutions (faculties and institutes) that will be responsible for the scientific evaluation of the dossiers of plant protection products at a national level, the project will contribute to raising institutional capacity of the institutions of the Republic of Serbia. It will also ensure the transparency of information on plant protection products and pesticides residues which will be available not only to key stakeholders, but also to the general public, thus enabling the sustainability of project results.

Since the project started, significant progress has been made towards the achievement of benchmarks and mandatory results of the project EU experts from the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia have worked with the Plant Protection Directorate and staff from the selected institutes and faculties to evaluate over 500 sources of active substances in plant protection products authorized on the Serbian market. This is the first of four groups of evaluations of active substances that need to be carried out before all plant protection products authorized in Serbia can be considered to be compliant with EU rules and procedures.

The Twinning project, with a budget of approximately 900,000 Euros, started in October 2016 and has an 18 month implementation period.