Brussels, 03/07/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has for the first time designated those Serb companies - 190 in all - to which the financial sanctions regime will not apply. The Commission is thus implementing the new strategy decided by the Council, which on 6 April amended the regulation relating to financial sanctions in order to enable certain Serb companies to be excluded. From 1 July, date when the regulation's amendments came into force, those companies that have demonstrated their absence of ties with the Belgrade regime will now escape these sanctions which will now applyto all other companies (freeze on assets, prohibition to invest).
To escape the sanctions, the "cleaned" companies had to prove that: I) they did not exercise activities in the following fields: banking, financial services, energy or oil, military or police equipment, transport, petrochemicals, iron or steel; ii) their trade with Community companies is less than 100,000 euro a month, iii) profits gained from this trade were out of reach of the Serb Government.
Companies of Kosovo and Montenegro, on the other hand, are presumed not to have ties with the Serb Government and are therefore not affected by the sanctions, unless a tie can be proven.
The Commission should, by end July, add another 50 companies to the list. This will be reviewed regularly, in relation to requests made by Serb companies. Since the drawing up of this list was announced, close to 300 Serb companies have applied for exemptions.