Brussels, 20/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - Not surprisingly, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), on Monday 19 May, found for the United States which challenged the banana import scheme put in place by the EU in 2006. In April, the WTO disputes settlement board reached the same conclusion on a complaint from Ecuador (see EUROPE 9638).
On 29 June 2007, the United States called for a WTO compliance panel to be set up, on the grounds that the EU had not brought its banana import scheme into line with WTO obligations (see EUROPE 9459). The United States thus joined Latin American countries (Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Nicaragua) in challenging what they felt were the EU's excessively high customs duties on imported bananas.
After examining the United States claims and the defences advanced by the European Communities, the WTO compliance panel ruled that: - the preference granted by the EU to an annual duty-free tariff quota of 775,000 tonnes of imported bananas originating in ACP countries “constitutes an advantage for this category of bananas, which is not accorded to like bananas originating in non-ACP WTO Members, and is therefore inconsistent with Article 1: 1 of GATT (General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade) 1994”; - the current Community banana import regime is inconsistent with several other GATT Articles.
Consequently, the panel concluded that, through its current regime for the import of bananas, the European Communities have failed to implement the recommendations and rulings of the disputes settlement board.
In its defence, the European Commission continues to advance the same arguments: imports of bananas from Latin American countries into the EU have increased since 2006 and the preference granted to ACP countries “no longer exists”. Since 1 January 2008, ACP preferences are granted by economic partnership agreements (EPAs) or interim agreements which comply with WTO rules, the Commission argued. (L.C.)