Imported products continue to be sold without Albanian inscriptions

The Ministry of Trade and Industry during the past year has encountered six cases of non-food products that have not met this legal criterion, of which three cases have been filed in court.

Kosovo Customs Director Bahri Berisha has also declared that there are imports of non-declarational Albanian-language products, which also originate with the European Union.

“We have such cases that do not come in Albanian, but with legislation from MTI and with their instructions, parties or importers dare not put that product on the market without making the inscription in Albanian and usually given a seven-day deadline by MTI inspectors to place labels in Albanian for products before they go on sale in the Kosovo/GTK market, Berisha stressed.

MTI Minister Andrew Shala has said the legal obligation remains for Kosovo consumers to be offered quality products at the same time products containing official language content.

Minister Shala says the MTI is committed to having all products imported in Kosovo inscriptions in Albanian, which is also legal duty for importing companies.

He added that the MTI, when it faces goods without inscriptions in official or Albanian, removes the merchandise from the market until it is established in the official language.

“As far as the contents of the declaration of each commodity, which is sold on the territory of the Republic of Kosovo, as the laws in effect define, each commodity should have the declaration or description of that product being in the official languages of the Republic of Kosovo”, Shala has said.

According to him, the consumer protection law envisions that each product sold in the Republic of Kosovo by December 21st should also have the product's origin flag on the left side of the price.

Some of the responsibility for the content of food products is held by the authorities of the Food and Veterina Agency(AUV). And no case has been found from AUV.

The head of the Food and Veterina Agency, Valdet Djindovci, has not indicated whether they have punished any economic subject, but has said AUV does not allow products to appear on the market without being the correct English-language appointment of content.

All food products imported are required for economic operators to respect their appointment, above all to respect the language of the importative state, in this case in Albanian. However, all products that are imported also contain declaration and are not allowed to go to market without being the exact English - language label for content.... At no moment and in no way is it allowed that any product of plant or animal origin is allowed to be imported without meeting the criteria and without being sure”, Djindovci says.

Council for Protection of Consumers Chief Sheriff Feyzullahu said that in all sectors there are several products that do not have Albanian-language inscriptions.

Fyzullah has demanded that all products not labeled in official languages be removed from the market.

Directors of the Kosovo Chamber of Economics claim that this phenomenon without inscriptions in the Albanian language is obvious and have asked other law enforcement inspectors and mechanisms to take measures.

The chairman of the Kosovo Chamber of Economics(OEK), Berat Rukiqii, has said that equal competition should be created in the market by lowering informity, because part of businesses are discriminated against because the law is not implemented equally for all.

“We are interested in having formalities, to have equal competition, and not inspectors, nor law enforcement mechanisms can be used for dico-neʹ and for dico-ciyerce, which means that with the implementation capacity they have so far necessarily come to this situation, with some of the rules for some not worth”, Rukicqi stressed.

With this problem with products that are not labeled in Albanian, Albania is also facing.

The chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Tirana, Nikolin Jaka for Kosova Prees, says Albania has the same problem where relevant institutions tolerate the considerable lack of information that consumer should receive.

Circularly, the “must be respected. Almost started the tendency to respect him, but minimalistic is this tendency because many products come, because we have great communication and commercial circulation of Italian origin. Many products that come simply come with a label with an inscription on ethics that is not within ethics and the law on labels. So Albania has the same problem and these are the same institutions that tolerate this gross lack of information that should receive citizenship for the product that consumes”, Jaka has said.

No declaration of compound goods in Albanian risks the health of Kosovo's citizens from the consumption of these imported products without declaration.