“We note that recent debate in the BiH media has suggested that in the context of Croatia’s accession to the EU, BiH is being asked by the EU to fully liberalise its market and drop all duties on goods coming from the EU including Croatia from 1 July 2013. This is not correct.’’, said EUD/EUSR spokesperson Andy McGuffie.
“The EU’s proposal – as per every previous enlargement – is that BiH increases only the few existing duty-free quotas in the SAA, to take account of Croatia’s accession. This has the advantage of minimising disruption to existing trade. Discussions continue on this subject with the BiH authorities.
“We underline that while BiH retains duties on many goods coming from the EU, the EU will maintain its policy of duty-free access to the EU market of 500 million consumers for nearly all BiH goods. This has been in place since 2000 to help the economic development of BiH and remains one of the major ways in which we support the country.”
