Brussels, 13/03/2000 (Agence Europe) - European Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler and the American Agriculture Minister last week held a first meeting concerning the possibility of replacing the American retaliatory measures in the hormone-treated meat affair by EU trading "compensations". The WTO verdict which considers as unlawful the European ban on imports of hormone-treated meat had authorised the United States to impose prohibitive customs duties on a certain number of European products for a trade value of $190 million. The hypothesis of replacing these sanctions with the opening, by the EU, of additional access possibilities for American products to the European market had already been envisaged, and the EU feels it is still preferable in the case of divergence to choose the solution which develops trade rather than the contrary. It seemed normal that the European concession should cover the sector of beef: Europe would increase the annual quota (11,500 tonnes) opened to high quality American meat (without hormones).
In opposition to this solution, however, is the fact that Europeans had noted gaps in American controls on the meat in question exported to the EU (which reportedly was still not hormone-free). This problem has now been overcome thanks to improved controls in the United States, acknowledged as such by the EU (see EUROPE of 10 March, p.6) and so the road is now open for a positive solution to the hormone meat affair, which has poisoned Euro-American relations for a long while now. The solution given would allow: i) the EU to maintain the ban on hormoned meat, a measure considered indispensable for not only economic but also for agricultural and food safety reasons), and at the same time to obtain abolition of the measures that penalise several European farm products on the US market); ii) the United States to obtain commercial compensation to which, according to the WTO verdict, they are entitled.
The modalities of replacing sanctions by compensations have still to be negotiated as soon as possible.