Citrus dispute: SA seeks a political solution

SA is hoping to nudge the EU towards a political solution in its long-running dispute over restrictions on local citrus fruit entering the EU, its largest export market.

This is in addition to the dispute SA has launched at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which seeks to review the EU regulations governing the importation of citrus fruits which affect imports from SA.

SA claims EU phytosanitary requirements relating to false codling moth impose restrictions on the importation of SA citrus fruit. SA regards the regulations as unscientific.

In July, SA requested the establishment of two panels at a meeting of the dispute settlement body of the WTO to examine what, in SA’s view, are unscientific and discriminatory measures placed on citrus imported from SA by the EU, after more than 20 years of engagements with the EU to find an amicable solution.

Speaking to Business Day on the sidelines of the WTO public forum in Geneva, Zuko Godlimpi, deputy minister of trade, industry & competition, said he would meet his European counterparts to discuss the matter further.

“We need to find a way outside and inside the WTO’s processes ... the only thing that got us here is because the previous bilateral process failed,” he said. “From a science point of view, we’ve done all that we could do to meet up with the standards that we have.”

The measures imposed by the EU are having a severe effect on SA’s citrus industry, which provides jobs to 144,000 people in the country. The restrictions also harm other countries in Southern Africa that depend on SA’s infrastructure for their citrus fruit exports.

The European market accounts for more than a third of SA’s total citrus exports. The Citrus Growers’ Association of SA has previously identified the dispute with the EU about these phytosanitary regulations as one of the main challenges to growing exports in line with the industry’s expected expansion.

DOMINO EFFECT

SA citrus growers spend about R3.7bn a year to comply with citrus black spot and false codling moth measures.

If SA was successful at resolving the dispute at the WTO, this was likely to have a domino effect on exports from the Southern African Development Community and the wider continent, Godlimpi said.

“It would be a breakthrough for most of the developing countries because what we’ve seen is that the major markets ... they’ve now decided that they’ll just erect all manner of strange barriers to frustrate your access into their markets, even as they pretend, on the one hand, to be open to fair trade.”