KOŠARAC TO KONAKOVIĆ: WIPE OFF POLITICAL SLIME AND STOP DEALING WITH TOPICS YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT!

EAST SARAJEVO, AUGUST 24 /SRNA/ - It’s high time Elmedin Konaković, this expert on everything and champion of populism and platitudes, wiped off the political slime and stopped dealing with topics he literally knows nothing about,” said the Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, Staša Košarac.

“Listen, kid, wipe off the slime, don’t be greedy, you’re still wet behind the ears!’ I’m quoting our Bora Đorđević instead of commenting on Konaković’s ignorance, which he persistently and unsuccessfully tries to mask with worn-out Sarajevo clichés and repeats,” Minister Košarac told SRNA in response to Konaković’s accusations against him regarding meat imports. Košarac stated that Konaković spoke this morning about meat imports, supposedly concerned about domestic production, and asked, “Why doesn’t Dino say that most meat is imported from the EU, which harms entrepreneurs in Republika Srpska and the Federation of BiH?” “While he promotes the EU, it brutally plunders our entrepreneurs. Does Dino dare repeat the sentence that the EU is exploiting entrepreneurs in Srpska and the FBiH? Does Dino dare support the adaptation of the Stabilization and Association Agreement /SAA/, which I have maintained from the start was negotiated to the detriment of our producers and processors? Does Dino dare explain why he never supported our proposal to introduce special protective measures, levies, and customs duties on imports from the EU, especially fresh and chilled meat?” Košarac emphasized. He reminded that he had repeatedly proposed to the Council of Ministers to start the process of adapting the SAA and introduce protective measures on meat imports, but support from the Federation of BiH was always lacking. “If the laws allowed the Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations in the Council of Ministers to independently decide to ban imports from the EU, I would have done it long ago. But the decision is not made by the minister; it is made by the Council of Ministers, which will not do it because of the sycophancy and subservience of the ministers from the Federation of BiH toward the EU,” Košarac explained. He asked whether Dino knows that, due to a number of absurdities enabled by the SAA, it is possible to import live animals from the EU into BiH, but BiH cannot export the meat from those animals to the EU. “Why is he against new markets, including the potentially lucrative Russian market? Why is he against enabling domestic processing capacities to process meat imported from the EU and then export it to new markets? Dino does not think about that. It is easier for him to be a populist than to seek solutions in favor of the domestic economy,” Košarac emphasized. He further asked whether Dino knows that meat processors in the FBiH are in serious trouble due to the lack of raw materials from the EU market and that they had asked us to allow the import of frozen red meat for processing from South America. “What has he done to protect and preserve the farms in the FBiH? What kind of agricultural policy do they have? Will Dino accept that we ban meat imports from the EU? I am in favor! Or that we introduce levies and customs duties on meat imports from the EU? I am in favor! Does he have the courage to step out of petty, local interests and seriously focus on solutions for the benefit of the domestic economy?” asked Minister Košarac.