This draft of the Food Safety Law is an attempt to elaborate a unified framework legislative act governing the food safety area and setting out main principles of food safety policy in line with internationally accepted rules.

     Successful accomplishment of the National Programme for Implementation of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (NP) is very much dependant on availability, volume and types of technical assistance. Although, the volume and the types of the technical assistance necessary for supporting implementation of the NP was not clear till this date.
     It is envisaged that this Report will serve as road map for involvement of technical assistance required for supporting implementation of the NP. Besides, the Report will be used by the Government during negotiations on involvement of technical assistance with donor community and for coordination of this assistance.

     This paper provides a brief overview of the experience in applying the VAT in the sphere of agriculture in EU and OECD member states. A number of other issues are also briefly covered herein, which are important for balanced and prudent policy making. This overview is addressed to agricultural policy makers and can be used as an informative material and at the same time serve as an initial step for further more in-depth and comprehensive analysis.

     The purpose of this paper is to assess and analyse the main principles behind consumer protection, market surveillance and safety aspects of food and non-food products in the EU. Further, it aims to support the Government of Armenia in creation of relevant and necessary consumer protection policy, including regulatory framework, practices and procedures in these areas designed to safeguard consumers from products that do not reach reasonable level of safety.

     For the clear-cut organization of training courses envisaged by the National Programme for PCA implementation, determination of the content and scope of trainings, AEPLAC, together with the Civil Service Council of Armenia, carried out training needs assessment from February to March, 2006. To this end a survey was conducted among the participants from 14 NGOs and 682 officials from 21 state agencies within the system of civil and public service.

The analysis of the findings of the survey led to the following conclusions.

The state officials on the whole are not well informed of the EU history, structure, EU accession criteria, integration tools, relations to Non-Member states, EU-Armenia relations and integration process. In fact, only a small percentage (4%-8%) is well informed of those topics. The biggest share (47%-54%) falls to the officials with superficial knowledge of the European Union. And on average 20% of respondents have no idea about the EU related issues.