european trade commissioner Catherine Ashton hinted this week that negotiators are close to an agreement on cutting dollar banana import tariffs.
Ashton was speaking to Reuters outside an EU-Russia summit in Stockholm on Wednesday. She reportedly said: “We are in the closing stages of what could be the end of this long dispute… I think it will be later this week or early next week.”
The deal could therefore be reached before the World Trade Organisation ministerial conference on November 30.
Latin American producers would be delighted by a cut in import duty, but such a deal will dismay African and Caribbean (ACP) producers, who have long-standing historical ties with the EU.
The dispute is now the WTO’s longest running, at 13 years. Judges at the international trade body have ruled several times that the EU policy breaches global trade rules, as it favours ACP nations over the world’s major exporters Ecuador, Costa Rica and Colombia.
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