The World Trade Organization has ruled that the European Union's import policies on bananas violates international trade rules.  The decision means the United States is free to impose nearly $200 million in retaliatory tariffs on EU imported products.  The WTO announcement pleased U.S. farm groups.

"For nearly seven years, U.S. and Latin American banana producers have been working through their respective governments and within the rules of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and WTO systems to bring an end to Europe's discriminatory trade practices," the groups said.  U.S. and Latin American countries "have been unjustly shut out of the European market, resulting in billions of dollars in irrevocable lost export sales and thousands of lost jobs among growers and related goods and services providers."

The groups making the statement were the American Farm Bureau Federation, American Meat Institute, Chiquita Brands International and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

They cited the EU's refusal to allow imports of beef from cattle treated with growth hormones as an example of how the "international community must continue to put pressure on the EU to come into compliance with WTO rulings."

The Europeans "intentionally choose to thumb (their noses) at international agreements (they) promised to uphold," the statement continued.  The EU must "finally live up to the full legal responsibilities expected of all major developed countries within the multilateral system."

Bloomberg News quoted EU Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan saying the EU "will naturally abide by the rules as we have consistently said we would."