If no amendments to the revised EBA proposal are put forward, the EU Council of Ministers may pass the initiative by a qualified majority vote at the end of February. A study released this week for Oxfam, a British-based pressure group that works to address the structural causes of poverty, had warned that the original radical EBA proposal had attracted extremely strong resistance from EU Member States, European farmers, and parts of the multinational sugar industry and could be weakened. It also represents an important political gesture indicating the EU s commitment to promote a more equitable distribution of the benefits of international trade, said Oxfam director David Bryer in the preface to the report. Opposition to the original EBA initiative from the EU farm lobby, in particular the sugar lobby, was such that some officials here have jokingly referred to their position as one of embracing an Everything but farms initiatives. Within the EU, major sugar producers are based in France, Germany and Britain.
Rice is produced by Italian interests and bananas by transnationals based in Spain.
The total raw sugar production of all LDCs that have significant exports is only 1.8 million tonnes and in the short term the FAO figures indicate a potential maximum increase in LDC sugar exports to the EU of only 100,000 tonnes. The EU produces 16 million tonnes of sugar each year, consumes 12 million tonnes and exports the rest. If LDC producers earn more they may be able to afford to increase the volume of their exports. If so, the ultimate impact of EBA could be much greater. If, for example, Bangladesh were able to divert some of its existing exports from lower-priced markets to the EU, or even to increase production so that it could export more in total, the additional export revenue would be a dynamic gain from the EBA change, says the report.