Levies and customs duties must include CEFTA countries

(Patria) - The Association of Farmers of the Federation of BiH and the Peasant Alliance of the Federation of BiH support the announcements by the Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, Staša Košarac, regarding the initiation of the procedure for the decision on introducing levies and customs rates on the import of fresh and chilled beef and pork from the EU for a period of two years.

At the same time, we remind Minister Košarac that adopting this decision would only solve part of the farmers' problems. A comprehensive solution is not possible without introducing levies and customs duties on imports from CEFTA countries, not just the EU. Also, the Council of Ministers' decision must be extended to all agricultural products that threaten domestic production where there are market surpluses.

We remind Minister Košarac that this is one of the conclusions from the meeting held in Doboj ten days ago, which the minister personally attended. Partial solutions are not real solutions and will only benefit a part of the farmers, primarily from RS, while further uncontrolled imports from CEFTA countries would open up space for abuses and circumvention of the introduced levies and customs duties.
On this occasion, we remind the entire Council of Ministers that tomorrow marks the deadline we set a month ago, in cooperation with associations from RS, for taking the necessary steps to protect domestic production. If the Council of Ministers ignores our demands, we will be forced to express our dissatisfaction through protests, it was announced.