EU/US/CANADA: EU CHALLENGES 126 MILLION dollar TIT-FOR-TAT BEEF TRADE SANCTIONS AT WTO

摘要

The European Union will challenge sanctions against EU exports by the United States and Canada at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Commission announced on Novembers. The tit-for-tat tariff sanctions, worth $126 million, were set up inJuly 1999 by the US and Canada to retaliate against the EU's long-standing ban on imports of North American beef from hormone-treated cattle. The EU ban had been overruled in 1998 by the WTO, which said it did not have proper scientific backing - a decade after it had been imposed. But the EU, which revised its hormone-treated beef ban in 2003 to bring it into line with WTO regulations, says the US and Canadian sanctions are "illegal".