INTRODUCTION

This arbitration was initiated pursuant to the procedures set out in the Annex to the Waiver Decision with respect to Article I of GATT 1994 contained in the document “European Communities – The ACP-EC Partnership Agreement, Decision of 14 November 2001” (the “Doha Waiver”). This is the second recourse to arbitration initiated pursuant to that decision. The procedural background of this proceeding is described in Section II below.

PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The Arbitrator issued its first award to the parties on 1 August 2005 and notified the award to the General Council later that same day. The mandate of the Arbitrator in the first arbitration was:

In its first award, the Arbitrator determined “that the European Communities’ envisaged rebinding on bananas would not result in at least maintaining total market access for MFN banana suppliers, taking into account all EC WTO market- access commitments relating to bananas.”

In a letter dated 4 August 2005, the Arbitrator observed that the fifth tiret of the Annex to the Doha Waiver contemplated that “in the absence of a mutually satisfactory solution, the same arbitrator will be asked to determine, within 30 days of the new arbitration request, whether the EC has rectified the matter”. In the light of the possibility of a second arbitration, the Arbitrator outlined the procedure that it proposed to follow, were a second arbitration to be requested. This procedure included a tentative timetable for the parties’ submissions, the hearing and the award. The letter also invited participation by the same African, Caribbean and Pacific (“ACP”) countries that participated in the first arbitration (the “relevant ACP Members”) on the same terms as in the first arbitration, including the possibility of presenting a collective written submission and a collective statement at the hearing.