Ekomozaik, RECETOX and Ministry of Environmental Protection and Physical Planning of the North Macedonia organized a full day meeting in Holiday Inn hotel in Skopje on 10 June 2025. The meeting was part of the implementation of the GEF project 10785 (Global Review and Update of the National Implementation Plans under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants). The 31 participants of all stakeholders, but namely from the ministries and national authorities, industry consultancy companies and national statistical office have reviewed the results of extensive inventories prepared by expert team for 30 POPs (pesticides, industrial chemicals and unintentionally produced chemicals) that were listed in the Annexes of the Stockholm Convention until 2022 inclusive. The expert team have prepared detailed questionnaires and organized extensive consultations with POP holders in the country during 2024 to obtain necessary data.
From the collected evidence these suggestions for further work (elements of action plans) 63 were proposed to be discussed in the prioritization procedure. They entail, among others continued and accelerated remediation of the HCH site at OHIS and old pesticide and mixed waste burial site at Polinica. For PCB, the action covers finalization of inventory of small transformers and the expectations are to find some 90 tonnes of PCB contaminated equipment. For newer POPs, and brominated flame retardants (BFR), the issue is linked to the transport sector (vehicles) and electric and electronic equipment and indoor equipment impregnated by BFR and also investigate further the construction sector. Minimization of releases of unintentionally produced POPs also remains among necessary activities as the inventoried releases do not decrease over last 15 years.
Second part of the meeting was dedicated to discussion on the prioritization of proposed activities in six small groups as a first step to feed into the prioritization procedure. The country will now move on to simultaneously work on the update of the National Implementation Plan and go through the prioritization procedure to identify the top priority activities for this revised plan. It is expected that the draft updated NIP will become available for comments in the end of September 2025.
Within the GEF supported project 10924 on Review and Update of the National Implementation Plan (NIP) for the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in Albania, Armenia and Kazakhstan a several meetings with KZ authorities took place in early June 2025.
Half-way milestone in the project implementation was achieved on 27 May 2025 with a successfully completed Inventory validation meeting held in the Rooms Hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia. The meeting was supported by the GEF project 10785 and organized in collaboration with the Regional Environmental Centre for the Caucasus, Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia and the Stockholm Convention Regional Centre hosted at RECETOX.
