Adopted Law on Items of General Use
On 03. April, 2019, the National Assembly of the Republic of the Serbia adopted the Law on Items of General Use (“Law”), published in the Official Gazette No. 25/2019 dated 03 April, 2019, effective eight days after publishing in the Official Gazette, on 11 April, 2019.
Among others, in items of general use are included materials and items that come into contact with food, toys, cosmetic products, tobacco and tobacco products, electronic cigarettes and more. The Law prescribes the general conditions that must be met by the items for general use, while special conditions for all group of items for general use shall be defined by the competent Minister. The Law also envisages provisions on sanitary inspection and sanitary inspector’s authorization during examination of items, in order to determine health safety and general safety of the items. One of the provisions also applies to monitoring conducted through the cooperation of the Institute of Public Health and the competent Minister, which objective is assembling an annual report with expert analysis and a proposal of measures on the health safety and general safety of the items of general use. The Law prohibits the placing on the market cosmetic products tested on the animals, but at the same time competent Minister is able to give permission to omit this requirement. In addition, all cosmetic products must have a declaration in Serbian, and all claims used in texts, brand name, pictures or other signs must not be used in way of assigning to the attributes which the product does not possess. All the items that come into contact with food must, also, have a declaration in Serbian.
The primary reason why the Law was adopted is that the currently applicable Law on General Product Safety is not sufficiently harmonized with the regulations of the European Union which is not in accordance with the obligations undertaken by signing the Stabilization and Association Agreement. In addition, the matter is not fully and comprehensively regulated by the law currently effective, and the new regulation was necessary because of the utmost importance of the health and safety of the people.
The adoption of the Law has eliminated certain inconsistencies and ambiguities, thus creating legal basis for the comprehensive acceptance of the relevant and most recent European Union regulations relating to the health and safety of items of general use. The ultimate goal of regulation is to ensure a high level of protection of the health and the life of people, free movement of the items with the countries of the European union, and other countries, and ensuring high level of professional supervision over the application of the Law.