The European Union has taken a first step towards a possible new "banana war" with Latin America, notifying the World Trade Organisation (WTO) it would triple import tariffs on the fruit next year, officials said.
The move is likely to trigger a request from Latin America for the WTO to step in to head off a repeat of a bitter 1990s dispute over bananas that Europe lost.
That dispute ended after the United States and top banana exporter Ecuador brought a successful suit at the WTO complaining that the complex existing EU system combining quotas with duties discriminated against the Latin Americans.
As a result, the bloc pledged to switch to a system of tariff only, but there has been no agreement on how high to set the rate, which will apply from 2006. The EU has declared its preferred tariff at €230 a tonne.
The EU is keen to defend the interests of a group of Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) former European colonies who want a duty as high as 300 euros on the cheaper Latin American bananas to stop them flooding the lucrative EU market, where ACP fruit now enters duty free.
The Latin Americans want nothing higher than the current €75 basic tariff, although Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama, the main Latin producers, failed to agree on an exact level at a meeting last week in the Ecuador capital Quito.
As things stand, the Latin Americans pay €75 a tonne on exports to the EU within their assigned quotas, but a prohibitive €680 euros on anything in excess.
The Quito meeting said the EU should postpone its new system until a duty is agreed. But Brussels insists it cannot do so and says it has already held back its WTO notification to give the Latin Americans more time to agree a position.
Officials said a request - probably from one or several Latin American countries - for arbitration now seemed likely.