EU seeks to boost food import controls

The aim is to “protect consumers, harmonise control methods and rules and also make sure that products entering Europe respect the same norms that we put on our producers.

"We can see with what's going on
in China with milk, with what's happened in Ukraine with tainted oil,
that society has demands," Michel Barnier told AFP in an
interview on the sidelines of an EU farm ministers meeting.
Barnier, whose country currently holds
the European Union's rotating presidency, said the Chinese milk scare
"supports me in defending a memorandum … on stepping up safety
controls of imports to Europe."
France hopes that the measures will win
backing by the EU's other 26 members by the end of its presidency on
December 31. It would then be up to the European Commission to draft
a formal legal proposal.