Bosnia’s Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Minister Mirko Sarovic told N1 that Kosovo abolished only a part of its protective trade measures, but some measures still remain in force. This announcement comes after the Economy Ministry of Kosovo decided to introduce tariffs on imports from CEFTA countries, last week.

“The CEFTA is a free-trade zone for regional countries and with the EU's free-trade zone, it represents one of the most important markets for us, but it is particularly important for us because these are our key regional partners,” Sarovic said commenting the Wednesday ministerial meeting in Belgrade attended by ministers from Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and FYR of Macedonia prompted by the Kosovo decision.

Since Kosovo is a member state of the CEFTA (Central European Free Trade Agreement), today's meeting participants decided that each CEFTA member state will introduce reciprocal measure against Kosovo if Kosovo decides not to abolish all protective measures introduced last week.

“We are only partially satisfied because Kosovo abolished only some of the measures prior to the meeting, but not all, so some protective measures remained in force. We called on Kosovo to abolish the remaining measures in the next few days, and we expect they will return to the basic CEFTA principles,” he stressed.

However, he rated the talks as successful.

“The talks were successful, the results are encouraging considering there are no additional tariffs. We expect Kosovo to abolish the remaining tariffs,” Sarovic concluded.

The Foreign Trade Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina requested an urgent response from Bosnia’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations after they received the information that Kosovo’s Ministry of Economy issued a decision to introduce protective measures on imports of milk and dairy products from Bosnia and a decision to introduce protective measures for fruit and vegetable imports from all the countries of the region, which came into force last week.