A five-day training on market surveillance management intended for representatives of the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications of the Republic of Serbia was held from 15 to 19 March 2021 online. It aimed at their familiarization with the techniques for monitoring, verification and implementation of market control, as well as good practice examples from the European Union in the areas of energy efficiency labelling and ecodesign.
This training is one of the activities of the European Union project "EU4Energy Labelling and Ecodesign" which aims to strengthen the capacity of the market inspection of Serbia to conduct market surveillance that complies with the new regulations.
The training was devoted to energy efficiency labelling, relevant regulations, the role of market inspection in the and their coordination with other actors in the system, and the most effective approaches to market surveillance, from a strategic and practical point of view.
Based on the assessment of inspection capacities and situation on the market of the energy related products, needs for professional support of inspection were identified and the training plan was developed, along with the accompanying materials.
According to Goran Aksentijević, Head of the Department for Control of Conformity and Product Safety of the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications of the Republic of Serbia, further harmonization of certain segments of market surveillance with that in the EU is needed. Aksentijević added that "apart from constant raising of capacities of the market inspection, it is necessary to engage new staff, whereby the priority for hiring would be education in technical sciences. There is also a need to include designated conformity assessment bodies in checking of the accuracy of information on products. Condition for this is to allocate funds in the budget for the purpose of sampling, testing and reporting."
Through these activities, the EU project "EU4Energy Labelling and Ecodesign" supports the market inspection to control the application of regulations on energy labelling and ecodesign, better quality of services of conformity assessment bodies and domestic manufacturers to produce household appliances in line with domestic and European regulations.