EU fights for reprieve on hormone-treated beef ban

Date: 14/05/1998

By Myles Neligan

EU OFFICIALS in Geneva have angered their US counterparts by continuing to stall moves to dismantle the Union's controversial ban on hormone-treated beef imports.

In the run-up to the World Trade Organisation hearing called to set a deadline for lifting the embargo, officials have indicated that they will argue for a four-year reprieve.

The arbitration procedure, which follows last year's WTO decision that the EU ban breaches international trade rules, has reignited a bitter EU-US dispute over the precise interpretation of the ruling.

"We want the EU to implement the WTO decision immediately. The longest anyone has been given to comply with a WTO decision so far is 15 months and we would regard this as an absolute maximum," said a US agriculture official.

European Commission officials retort that the trade body's final ruling allows the EU ban to stand provided Union representatives submit scientific proof demonstrating conclusively that hormone residues in beef present a health risk to consumers.

They argue that a four-year stay of execution is justified because it will take at least two years to carry out the necessary scientific tests, and another two years to phase out the import ban if the WTO then decides that these tests are not conclusive.

"We are quite simply sticking by our WTO obligations, as set out in last year's decision," said one official.

The US flatly rejects this interpretation, claiming that the WTO decision unambiguously calls for the immediate removal of the EU embargo.

"The ruling says that the ban was illegal and must be dismantled. It also says that if scientific evidence establishing that there is a risk to consumers comes to light at a later date, then the matter may be reconsidered. But that does not mean that the ban can stand for the time being," said the US official.

Washington has previously demanded that the EU pay American farmers 90 million ecu worth of compensation for earnings lost through the import ban. In 1990, it retaliated by imposing punitive import tariffs on a range of European agricultural goods, although these were repealed after the Commission referred the dispute to the WTO in 1994.

The US raised the matter in the world trade body itself two years later, arguing successfully that the EU ban was a deliberate barrier to trade rather than a consumer protection measure.

Feelings are running high ahead of the arbitration panel's ruling, due on 27 May. The antagonism between the two sides was underlined by their inability to agree even on the composition of the panel. The two judges were eventually appointed by WTO director-general Renato Ruggiero after negotiations between EU and US officials ground to a halt.