Press Release: Commission appeals against WTO sugar ruling

The World Trade Organization (WTO) on 15 October 2004 circulated and made public the panel reports in the dispute brought by Australia, Brazil and Thailand against the EU sugar regime. In response, the Commission announced that it would appeal the ruling. The panel came to the conclusion that the EU had been exporting more sugar with export subsidies than it was permitted to do under the WTO Agreement. The panel found that a footnote in the EU's WTO schedule regarding export of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) and India equivalent sugar with export subsidies had no legal effect. It further considered that exports of EU sugar produced outside the quotas ('C sugar') benefited from export subsidies. The African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries' strong intervention against this challenge indicated that the case also threatened the value of the current preferential access arrangements which the EU had had in place for decades.

WTO: Trade Topics: Dispute Settlement: The Disputes http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/distabase_e.htm

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