An Assessment Of The Shift To A Tariff Regime

shifting from a tariff-quota to a tariff-only regime on imported bananas. It is organized in two Parts. Part I focuses on WTO-related matters. Section 1 provides an overview of the WTO disciplines imposed on the tariffication process to be done by the EU, underlining the key condition of a shift “at least maintaining total market access for MFN banana suppliers.” Section 2 presents the calculations done by the European Commission (without questioning at this stage the Commission’s procedure). It shows the substantial revisions needed for full compliance to WTO disciplines, and calculates that an ad valorem tariff of at most 30 percent (corresponding to a specific tariff of 134 €/ton) would be consistent with WTO disciplines. Section 3 estimates the impact of the tariff of 230 €/ton that the current EU proposal would impose on banana imports (instead of the 134 €/ton tariff calculated in section 2), except on imports from ACP suppliers who are given a preference margin equal to the full new specific tariff. This tariff differential has a dramatic effect on the supply of bananas to the EU. Non-ACP suppliers are forced out of the EU market, with a 27, 23 and 40 percent drop in export