BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC):THE EUROPEAN Commission (EC) yesterday said it was disappointed with the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) arbitrators' ruling against the proposed banana import tariff.
The EC said it will study carefully the implications of Thursday's decision by the WTO's arbitrators to reject the proposed new import tariff for bananas.
The Commission had proposed a single tariff of ¤187 (US$226) per tonne for bananas imported from countries, mainly in Latin America, that enjoy Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status.
DUTY-FREE QUOTA
It had also proposed a duty-free quota of 775,000 tonnes for bananas from the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states as of January 1, 2006.
"It is regrettable that the arbitrators did not use this opportunity to provide more clarity as to how this long-standing dispute could be resolved," the EC said in a statement.
The European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mariann Fischer Boel, said her organisation was "surprised and disappointed that the arbitrators did not back our proposal.
"We believed that the system we proposed would have maintained access to our markets in a fair manner. We calculated the proposed tariff in a neutral and transparent manner, based on a comprehensive legal and economic analysis. We will now carefully study the decision before deciding how to proceed."
The EU said it had obtained two waivers from its WTO obligations for the preference granted to bananas from the ACP countries under the terms of the ACP-EC Partnership Agreement.
It said the arbitration decision reached this week was requested by Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela, while the relevant ACP countries were granted limited participation rights.
