Brussels, 16/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission will send its director general for agriculture, Jerzy Plewa, to Rabat on 23 April in an attempt to dissipate the growing tension stemming from changes to the Community market in fruit and vegetable access price regime.
The importance that Moroccan public opinion and media have given to this issue has has been turning it into a crisis which is threatening implementation of the fisheries agreement. A sit-in of producers was organised on Monday in protest.
Rupert Joy, the European ambassador in Rabat, explained in a press release that the European Commission is very aware of the concerns voiced by the Moroccan authorities, who believe that this change would have a negative impact on Moroccan fruit and vegetable exports.
According to the arguments outlined in official media sources in the country, Moroccans think that “the system adopted means that customs duties on fruit and vegetables will be on the basis of 'standard import value' and not on the real value of the products, namely the effective sales price - a new mechanism that could have a very negative impact on Moroccan fruit and vegetable exports to EU markets”. A member of the Moroccan Association of Fruit and Vegetable Producers and Exporters asserted that there will be “a loss of between 100,000 and 150,000 jobs due to the suspension of 70% of Moroccan exports of tomatoes and a significant amount of harm to exports of cucumbers, courgettes and clementines”.
The spokesperson for Commissioner Dacian Ciolos said that the Commission would attempt to ensure that the “justified concerns” of Morocco would be “fully taken into account”. He indicated that the new price regime would apply across the board to all fruit and vegetables from non-EU countries and therefore did not just affect Moroccan tomatoes. The Commission's assurances contained the affirmation that it held the relations developed with Morocco very much in esteem but that it did not think that there would be a negative impact on the country.
The Moroccan ambassador asserted that the aim of this change “is not to put a brake on trade to the EU but to clarify a system that has been the source of recurrent criticism and concerns that the entry price system has not been correctly applied”. Joy pointed out that a detailed discussion had already taken place in February as part of the agricultural sub-committee set up under the association agreement. He also said that the Commission had proposed to continue these discussions in an effort to better understand the analysis made by the Moroccan authorities regarding the impact of the changes. (FB)