Brussels, 31/08/2005 (Agence Europe) - At its meeting in Strasbourg on 6 September, the European Commission is to adopt a new proposal on import duty applicable to imported bananas, further to the WTO arbitration which took place at the beginning of August, which decided that the customs duty of 230 EUR per tonne initially proposed walls too high to allow the producing countries of Latin America to maintain their share of the Community market (EUROPE 9003). The new tariff is likely to be between 230 and 75 EUR per tonne.
Further to the opinion returned on 1 August by the three experts commissioned by the WTO by request of Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela, the EU has 10 days officially to begin new talks with these countries. The Commission will now present its new proposal and, if the Latin American countries are still not satisfied after these negotiations, they will be able to take the matter back before the same group of judges, which will then have 30 days to come to a decision.
The customs duty at the centre of the legal proceedings is to replace the current level of duty, 75 EUR per tonne up to a quota limit of 2.2 million tonnes per annum and of 680 EUR per tonne for imports without quotas applicable to imported Latin American bananas, on 1 January 2006, as part of a purely tariff-based regime. Bananas imported from the ACP countries currently enjoy access to the Community market with no customs duty, within a quota of 750,000 tonnes. The idea remains to offer preferential access to the ACP countries in the new proposal, according to the Commission.