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EC Revises Banana Tariff Proposals

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

14 September 2005

The European Commission on Monday presented a revised proposal of 187 euros per tonne for most favoured nation (MFN) suppliers of bananas.

The new tariff is intended to replace as of 1 January 2006 the present regime based on tariff quotas for MFN – mostly Latin American – supplying countries. The EU currently applies a tariff rate of 75 euros per tonne for bananas covered by quotas, and 680 euros per tonne for those not covered by quotas.

The Commission’s proposal also maintains an equivalent level of preference for African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bananas through a tariff quota of 775,000 tonnes at zero duty.

The proposed MFN tariff is designed to maintain total market access for MFN suppliers, in line with the results of the WTO arbitration, which had been established after a request by Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela.

Speaking on Monday, Mariann Fischer Boel, EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development announced that:

“We are confident that our revised proposal is fully in conformity with the ruling of the WTO arbitrators. It was always our intention that the level of protection would not change under our new import regime. We have calculated the proposed tariff in a neutral and transparent manner."

"Following the WTO arbitration award on 1 August 2005, we have revised our proposal and we now look forward to consulting constructively with our Latin American trading partners. We are fully committed to putting into place a tariff only system for MFN imports by 1 January 2006, in accordance with the agreement on bananas approved by consensus in Doha in 2001.”

Peter Mandelson, EU Commissioner for Trade, added that:

"The Commission's new proposal confirms Europe's commitment to ending this longstanding dispute. We have been careful to ensure that preferential access for our ACP partners is maintained. We hope that we are one step closer to resolving this issue and we count on a constructive approach from our trading partners."

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