The European Parliament has this week, as expected, voted in favour of an international trade agreement between the EU, the US and Latin American countries, which is designed to end a 16-year long dispute over banana import tariffs.
In a session of the Parliament on 3 February, MEPs gave their backing to the deal, reached in late 2009, which will see the previous import tariff for Latin American bananas entering Europe reduced from €176 per tonne to €114 by 2017.
However, MEPs did warn that the agreement could not reconcile the interests of all parties, including EU banana growers.
They also believe the EU's special financial provisions for Europe’s outlying regions, including Guadeloupe, Martinique, the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands, do not provide sufficient support, concluding that producers in these territories could be “significantly affected” by the deal.
Although ACP countries will receive extra support from the EU budget (up to €200m), MEPs have called for increased financial compensation to EU and ACP producers and an extension in its timescale to 2020 if necessary. They have also urged the European authorities to take other steps to ensure that domestic EU producers are able to stay in the market.
The approval of the agreement effectively marks the end of the longest-running dispute in the history of international trade, which began in the early 1990s when the EU imposed the entry tariff on Latin American imports to protect small producers in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.
The EU has agreed to gradually end its preferential treatment of banana exporters in ACP countries in exchange for an agreement by Latin American countries to drop their complaints at the World Trade Organisation.
