The European Union has spoken of its “surprise” at and “irrelevance” of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) upholding of a US complaint against the EU banana regime last week
“The report from the WTO was an interim report, and so the first thing to say is that there has been a breach of confidentiality,” an official at the European Commission told FPJ. “It is surprising even that the US took the case, as it is not a banana-producing country, and it is irrelevant now in any case, as we are signing Economic Partnership Agreements with African-Caribbean-Pacific countries.”
Meanwhile, in Latin America, the banana industry celebrated the preliminary ruling, despite the fact that EU figures showed that sendings from Latin America to Europe had risen by 10 per cent since it brought in the existing and much maligned rules in 2006. Mariano Jiménez of Costa Rica’s national banana corporation Corbana said: “The resolution is very positive, and it makes us think that this conflict will be resolved in the short term.”
