EU reserves right to appeal on banana issue

But he said it was already clear that US sanctions of $ 520 million were wrong as the arbitrator had calculated the loss to the US of the EU’s banana regime at just $ 191.4 million.

United States Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky had claimed victory in the case on Monday because the report held the amended EU banana trade regime to be WTO-incompatible.

The ruling is no surprise, however. Experts never doubted that the amended EU regime was WTO-incompatible. The point at issue was that America had wrongly imposed sanctions without the WTO’s go-ahead, even though the EU had tested its patience.

The EU had made only “cosmetic” changes to its banana import rules after losing repeated disputes about it. America says these rules discriminate against its distributors of Latin American bananas and in favour of exporters from former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.