The National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority (ANSVSA) official took over the presidency of the Council of the European Union in the veterinary and food safety fields, reads the institution in a press release sent to AGERPRES on Friday.
The president of the ANSVSA, Geronimo Branescu, on Tuesday and Wednesday participated in Brussels in the official event occasioned by Romania taking over the presidency of the Council of the EU in the veterinary and food safety fields. The ANSVSA head presided on Tuesday and Wednesday the meeting of the Chief Veterinary Officers - CVO in the EU. During the meeting, the ANSVSA head presented the objectives and priorities of the Romanian presidency in the veterinary and food safety fields.
In the bio-security field, the objective of the Romanian presidency is to identify the necessary elements for strengthening the prevention capacity of the EU against the communicable disease events with elevated risk of cross-border transmission, to be applied to all member states, of a harmonized manner, said the ANSVSA head. The activity of the Romanian presidency in the bio-diversity field and the strategy applicable to the community space for the African swine flu, which also touches the specific needs at national level, added Branescu. The future strategies in the food safety sector target the improvement of the manner of solving key issues at community level, such as crisis management, the use of such risk assessment instruments in making decisions and communicating the risks. One of these directions, during this time, is to have the working groups of the Chief Veterinary Officers discuss food safety related topics, reads the abovementioned release.
Moreover, Romania will take over the topic on the improvement of conditions regarding the wellbeing of animals during the road transportation and it will organise, before the informal meetings of the CVO in Bucharest (June 12, 2019) and Constanta (June 13-14, 2019), on June 11, a seminar in Bucharest to identify solutions for improving the wellbeing of animals during transport by sea.
The Romanian presidency in the Veterinary and Food Safety Sector has obtained the CVO Group's approval for the ANSVSA proposal on the draft Council Conclusions related to the Special Report no. 31/2018 of the European Court of Auditors on animal welfare in the EU.
Two other important legislative files to be analyzed during the presidency of Romania are the proposal for a Regulation on the General Food Law and the proposal for a Regulation on the establishment of the single market, the competitiveness of enterprises, including small and medium-sized enterprises, and European statistics.
Romania will represent the interests of the EU Member States at the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) General Assembly. Regarding OIE's work, the Romanian presidency has obtained the CVO group's approval for the EU membership in the OIE-EU Joint Expert Group for the PVS tool (assessment of veterinary services performance) as well as the terms of reference for the work of this group of experts.
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