Western Balkans Trade Facilitation Support Project

In November, Manon Schuppers travelled to Kosovo on behalf of the SAFOSO’s World Bank mandate for the Western Balkan, to discuss with the Kosovo Food and Veterinary Agency what kind of support is needed to enhance the implementation of risk-based border inspection for food and feed. This support intends to strengthen domestic food and feed safety through enhanced border controls on the one hand and to facilitate international trade through more predictable, transparent and harmonized border inspection systems and procedures on the other hand.

SAFOSO is supporting the World Bank in the implementation of the Trade Facilitation Support Project in the Western Balkans. As part of the ongoing support, earlier this year, SAFOSO already designed and delivered a survey for the Western Balkan food and veterinary authorities to assess current strengths and challenges and areas for priority support for the design and implementation of risk-based border inspection for animals, food, feed and plants. The results of the survey were presented during a webinar in September. The discussions during our recent mission to Kosovo built up on the findings of this survey.

Already from 2016-2018, SAFOSO was supporting the Kosovo Food and Veterinary Agency in a project of the International Finance Corporation. At that time, we helped develop a risk assessment approach to support the planning of risk-based inspections of imported consignments. This shows the ongoing engagement of SAFOSO in the region and provides the basis for our continued collaboration.