The World Trade Organisation has confirmed that anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties imposed by the US on ripe olives from Spain do not comply with international trade rules, Euractiv reports.
The EU expects Washington to take action to enforce them with limited “room for compromise”, the EU Commission said in a note. On Tuesday (20 February), the WTO released a report that confirmed the dispute settlement body’s 2022 finding that US trade measures on olives from Spain were not in line with international trade rules. A European Commission spokesperson said:
“If adopted, the report will become binding between the EU and the US, and the US will have to take immediate action to implement the ruling and remove the duties.”
The WTO panel did not move to recommend that the US stop imposing illegal duties, as the EU had demanded, because “the panel is not in a position to make specific recommendations in this way”, the report said.
The US also has the option to appeal, but the WTO’s appellate body is currently dormant because the Trump administration has blocked appointments to the body. The US appeal would be filed “into the void,” according to WTO jargon.
But here things become less clear. “The appeal into the void, according to the WTO rules, can block the panel report and all the settlement procedure”, Philippe Musquar, a lecturer at Science Po Lille and the Cattolica University of Milan, told Euractiv. Musquar added:
“But in order to tackle the WTO appeal body blockage the EU has already in place rules allowing the block to retaliate even if the adjudication process is not complete”.
For this purpose, the EU revised the Regulation on International Trade Enforcement in 2021.
The EU and the US may also reach a compromise agreement. However, the EU believes that “after more than five years of countervailing duties against Spanish olive growers, despite a WTO ruling confirming their illegality […] there is little scope for compromise”, according to a Commission note circulated yesterday and seen by Euractiv.
The EU expects “the US to fully and immediately comply with the WTO ruling and cancel the duties, which is the only satisfactory way to resolve this dispute”, the document adds.
