ACP General Secretariat

 

Press release

146b089e

7 December 2001.
 

           ACP Council of Ministers (Brussels, 6-7 December 2001). Bananas and Sugar : The ACP request remunerative prices and technical assistance from the European Union. 

Bananas. The ACP Council of Minsters  is adopting a resolution on bananas which highlights, inter alia:

the WTO waiver granted to the ACP-EC Partnership Agreement on 14 November 2001 and welcomes with relief the fact that ACP bananas will continue to enjoy duty-free access to all quotas and duty-free entry until 31 December 2007;

that access is useful only if assorted with remunerative prices;

that there is a structural surplus of bananas on the world market which, in the absence of an effective restriction of quantities of imports into the Community, would result in an oversupply of bananas, plummeting prices to levels which would displace ACP and EU suppliers, none of which have alternative markets;

that the Special Framework of Assistance (SFA) only provides technical and financial support to designated traditional ACP banana suppliers ;

the  importance to the ACP of a modification by the European Commission of the definition of “non- traditional operators” to include designated marketing companies/authorities from ACP banana producing and supplying States that have produced and supplied bananas to the European Union over the 1994-96 period;

the ACP’s request to the European Commission to establish a mechanism out of the unallocated 8th E.D.F. resources to provide technical and financial assistance to ACP countries that do not currently benefit from the Special Framework of Assistance (SFA).  This assistance would help improve the level of competitiveness of these ACP producers in view of the impending establishment of the tariff only system on 1 January 2006.

Sugar. Council is also adopting a resolution on sugar, in which the ACP :

- welcomes the agreement reached on the new Special Preferential Sugar [SPS] and reiterates the need to address the issue of burden sharing resulting from Everything But Arms [EBA];
- calls on the European Union to ensure that every effort is made to defend, maintain and honour its commitments  under the Sugar Protocol and consider the significant and vital contribution that predictable and stable earnings derived from sugar exports have made to economic development and poverty alleviation
- noted that the Commodity Protocols would be reviewed in the context of the negotiations for new ACP-EU trading arrangements to be put in place in January 2008 and mandated its  Sugar Consultative Group to look into this issue and make the necessary recommendations.

 
 

contact :     Hegel Goutier         tel : +32 2 743 06 04       fax + 32 2 743 06 58         http://www.acp.int