Major manoeuvres underway in the banana sector with two calls

The interest groups are mobilising on the political front. The Brussels Call ( 9 October 2019 at the European Parliament), prepared by European producers within APEB, followed on from the Abidjan Call (20 September 2019), organised by the ACP producers. There were several themes common to these interventions by these banana supplier countries, which control 1.7 million tonnes of the 6.5 million tonnes consumed in the EU-28. The major concern is the request to freeze customs duty at 75 euros/tonne, the level it will reach in 2020. It is hard to see how this claim could be denied, even by the dollar producers, which according to the conclusions issued by CIRAD, are like all suppliers suffering from a slow but significant deterioration in terms of trade on the European market. We will recall that import prices set a new record low in 2018 of 11.9 euros/box, and that the initial results from 2019 are in no way optimistic, with a price barely above 12.2 euros/box.

The other concern of European and ACP suppliers involves the support measures. For the former this means the POSEI package (278.8 million euros per year), which must at least be guaranteed at its current level, and indeed be increased in case of market depreciation ( FruiTrop Banana Focus, January 2017, page 48). For the ACP origins, demand relates to the renewal of the BAM programme (Banana Accompanying Measures), worth 190 million euros over the period 2009-2013. We will recall that thanks to this steady fall in customs duty, dollar banana suppliers have made a competitiveness gain of more than 2 billion euros since 2010. There is another common claim: for the implementation of a genuine monitoring mechanism enabling market regulation in the event of a crisis. It has to be said that the mechanism in force since 2006 is an intellectual swindle, so deliberately unachievable are the conditions for triggering a market rebalancing action ( FruiTrop no.204, October 2012 and FruiTrop Banana Focus, January 2017, page 28).

Finally, European producers are calling for identical treatment with regard to the environmental and social conditions of production of bananas supplying the European market. This is more particularly aimed at dollar producers and the majority of the organic banana supply, well-known to be in breach of the standards. These two calls go some way to opening up the debates on the future of the European banana market, following on from the 2006 agreement. We will keep a close eye on the progress of the various trade agreements, the positioning on this case of the new Commission and the new European Parliament, and the release in 2020 of the impact study ordered by the European Commission.

banana - EU Barometer

appel abidjan - ceremonie signature - credit HD prod pour afruibana

appel abidjan - ceremonie signature - credit HD prod pour afruibana