Brussels, 23/08/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, the European Commission adopted a proposal of regulation intended to adapt the Community banana import regime (1993 Regulation) to take into account the agreement signed between the United States and Ecuador. We recall that this agreement provides for a system founded on historic references for allocating quotas that are destined to disappear in 2006 to the benefit of an exclusively tariff regime. The aim of the proposal, that should go before the Council and Parliament, above all consists in: (1) transferring, as of 1 January 2002, a quantity of 100,000 tonnes from quota C (reserved to ACP countries) to quota B (to the benefit of US and Ecuadorian suppliers); and (2) reserving quota C exclusively for the APC supplier countries.
A first regulation was adopted by the Commission on 7 May this year to define the new arrangements for management of import licenses bearing in mind the results of negotiations with the trading partners. These provisions have been in force since 1 July (see EUROPE of 3 May 2001). The proposal of regulation also sets out the following details: - in the context of the quotas A (2.2 million tonnes) and B (453,000 according to the proposal instead of 353,000 at the present time), opened for the import of products originating from all third countries, the imports of bananas from third countries are subject to customs duties of 75 euros/tonne; - imports under the C quota shall be subject to a zero duty (the Commission proposes 750,000 tonnes instead of 850,000 at the present time); - and a tariff preference of EUR 300 per tonne shall apply to imports originating in ACP countries. Finally, the Commission proposes to update the tariff and statistical nomenclature as well as the common customs tariff.