Brussels, 06/06/2008 (Agence Europe) - In a delicate time in the trade dispute that began in 1999 between the EU and Canada and the United States over hormone-treated meat, the EU appealed on 29 May 2008 against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) panel decision of 31 March 2008 confirming the illegality of the EU's embargo on hormone-treated meat imports. The WTO does not consider that the EU's October 2003 hormone directive is based on sufficiently solid scientific evidence to justify a ban on US and Canadian beef imports into the EU. The EU “disagrees with the panel's additional finding that it did not consider the new EU hormone directive to comply with the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures,” explains the European Commission in a press release. The EU believes the panel responsible for settling the dispute made “legal errors” and “failed to make a sufficiently clear recommendation to the effect that the US and Canada must remove their WTO-illegal retaliatory measures.” The Commission welcomed, however, “the panel's confirmation that the US and Canada had unilaterally maintained these sanctions in breach of WTO rules.” One way or another, the EU is hoping to recover the fines illegally levied during the trade dispute years. The sanctions levied by Canada total around €8 million and the sanctions levied by the US total some €79 million a year and take the form of import taxes on mustard, pork and other EU food products. The Commission is happy that the WTO panel “agreed with the EU that the US and Canada have illegally maintained retaliatory measures despite the fact that the EU adopted new rules on hormone-treated imports in 2003, in response to earlier US and Canadian criticism. Despite these new rules, the US and Canada unilaterally decided to maintain sanctions without testing the legality of the EU's rules at the WTO.” (E.H./transl. fl)