China will cooperate more with the European Union (EU) to
develop safety and security criteria for products, a leading
official from the top product quality supervision authority said
Wednesday.
To increase joint efforts to establish a product safety control
system, the two sides have agreed to establish a joint information
platform for industrial products, Wei Chuanzhong, vice-minister of
General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and
Quarantine (AQSIQ), said.
"We will assess what it will take to set up a database for the
platform by the end of this year," Wei said.
"The information platform will help solve problems arising from
bilateral trade, providing a more effective way to push forward
win-win trade development," Wei said.
Wei made the remarks after the sixth annual meeting of the
Negotiating Mechanism on Sino-EU Industrial Product and WTO/TBT
(World Trade Organization/technical bar-riers to trade), which took
place in Beijing Wednesday.
Under the negotiating mechanism, which was launched early in
2002, China and the EU have set up 10 working groups covering trade
issues in several industrial sectors, such as textiles, medical
devices, electrical and mechanical devices, chemicals and
cosmetics.
He said a four-month product-safety inspection campaign launched
by the AQSIQ is currently underway nationwide.
Prior to yesterday's meeting, the EU also signed the first
agreement for cooperation on pharmaceuticals and related products
with the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration, according to
the delegation of the European Commission to China.
"We will not impose any discriminative supervision regulations
on Chinese products exported to the EU market. Instead, we are
willing to offer technological support to Chinese enterprises to
ensure an effective control over product safety," Heinz Zourek,
director general for Enterprise and Industry of the European
Commission, said.
(China Daily October 26, 2007)
