BRATISLAVA, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Alleged differing standards in the European Union (EU) over the quality of food and other products, such as washing powders, is growing into an international scandal, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said Tuesday.
"I can't accept it that citizens of the Slovak Republic are being treated this way," Fico told a press conference.
Fico was referring to reports that some products sold in western EU countries don't have the same contents as the identical products sold in eastern EU countries.
In March this year, Bulgarian Ombudsman Maya Manolova said in a statement that Bulgarian consumers suffered from the double standards of food in the EU.
Large multinational companies that produce food and drinks offered products with much lower quality in Central and Eastern European countries, according to the statement.
Fico also said he'd recently experienced the food stuffs standard inequality himself. While buying fish fingers he realized that those bought in Austria had 300 grams and were made up of 65 percent meat, whereas those in Slovakia weighed 280 grams and contained 58 percent meat. The price and the name of the product, however, were exactly the same.
The premier said that such measures violated EU rules of the single market. "We have to defend ourselves; we cannot accept this," Fico said.
"We only want people in Slovakia to have access to food of the same quality as people from the West," said Fico.
Fico said he wanted to address the double standard in food quality at the meeting of the Visegrad Four (V4) -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia -- due to take place in Budapest on Wednesday.
Moreover, he said he wanted to send a letter to or meet in person with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker about the matter. "This is a serious political issue," Fico said.
