European Commission Directorate-General for Trade

Training

The European Commission, DG Trade, provides SPS trade related assistance. This is part of the European Community response to the commitment to trade-related technical assistance in the WTO Doha Development Agenda and in line with Article 9 of the WTO SPS Agreement.

Our SPS programme provides specific and targeted technical assistance in the area of food safety, human, animal and plant health for Developing Countries (DCs). The objective is to enable the developing countries to reach the required level of food safety to be able to export their products, providing jobs and economic value and raising the food standards in the developing countries. Our assistance complements the work of other European Commission services, EU Member States and of international organisations.

We provide four different types of assistance in this field:

• To assist experts from Developing Countries to attend meetings in international standard setting bodies. Assistance is provided for participation in meetings of the three organisations that are officially recognised in the WTO SPS Agreement, that is the Office International des Epizooties (OIE), the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and Codex Alimentarius in the fields of animal health, plant health and food safety and quality respectively.
• To send technical experts from EU Member States to Developing Countries to provide on-the-spot advice on action needed to satisfy EU import sanitary requirements.
• To bring staff from Developing Countries to training facilities within the EU for training on specific SPS topics.
• To contribute to the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) in order to assist developing countries in improving their ability to gain and maintain market access and to improve co-ordination among technical co-operation providers, mobilisation of funds, exchange of experience and dissemination of good practice in relation to the provision and receipt of SPS-related technical co-operation.

The budget for the year 2008 was more than €2.000.000. Activities are scheduled to continue in 2009.

In 2008, special training in the area of residues, aflatoxins, microbiology and EU SPS legislation (focusing on phytosanitary, sanitary issues and traceability) was organised in Europe for technical experts and administrators of non EU countries, with the following objectives:

• To explain the EU legislation for export to the EU of products of animal or plant origin;
• To advise on administrative issues,
• To have a better understanding of each others' SPS systems,
• To help them to overcome any technical difficulty (e.g. laboratory techniques, analytical methods, etc.) that they may have experienced in the past when trying to export these products to the EU.

Training sessions and seminars

Training sessions and seminars organised in 2008

Subject	Venue	Target audience	Website
Seminar on SPS issues	Brussels	Administrators from INDIA	www.sps-seminars.eu
Training on residues and contaminants analysis	Laberca, Nantes, France	Laboratory technicians actively engaged in testing of residues in food materials	www.saraf-educ.org/news/en/…
Training on microbiology analysis	Campden and Chorley Wood Food Research Association (CCFRA), Gloucestershire, United Kingdom	Laboratory technicians actively engaged in testing of microbiological agents in food materials	www.eutraining-microbiology.com
Training on aflatoxin analysis	Technical University Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany	Laboratory technicians actively engaged in testing of aflatoxins/ochratoxin A in food materials	www.mycotum.com
Seminar on eu legislation in the sps sector –sanitary issues (fisheries)	Brussels	SPS administrators and decision makers	www.spsseminar.eu
Seminar on eu legislation in the SPS sector – phytosanitary issues	Brussels	SPS administrators and decision makers	www.advanceconsulting.nl/News/49/…
Seminar on meat traceability	Brussels	Administrators and decision makers of Developing Countries	www.trade-traceability-seminars.com
Seminar on SPS issues	Brussels	Administrators from ASEAN countries	www.sps-seminars.eu

Please note that countries invitations will be sent to the administrations of target countries, inviting them to appoint candidates to attend the 2009 training activities. Therefore, spontaneous applications for training sessions and seminars will not be accepted.

More information on other SPS related technical assistance organised by the European Commission could be found on the following website: Better training for safer food