¹ Mar. 25, 1957 (Treaty of Rome), as amended by Treaty on European Union, Feb. 7, 1992, 1992 O.J. (C 224) 1.

² General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, opened for signature Oct. 30, 1947, TIAS No. 1700, 55 UNTS 187 (entered into force Jan. 1, 1948).

³ The “ACP-EEC Conventions” or “Lomé Conventions” aim at promoting the economic, social and cultural development of those countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific which are contracting parties thereto. The Fourth Lome Convention was signed in Lome on Dec. 15, 1989, 1991 O.J. (L 229) 3.

⁴ Case C-469/93, Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v. Chiquita Italia SpA, judgment of Dec. 12, 1995, para. 37 [hereinafter slip op.].

⁵ Case 184/85, Commission v. Italy, 1987 ECR 2013.

⁶ The first paragraph of Article 95 establishes that “no Member State shall impose, directly or indirectly, on the products of other Member States any internal taxation of any kind in excess of that imposed direcdy or indirectly on similar products.” According to the second paragraph, “no Member State shall impose on the products of other Member States any internal taxation of such a nature as to afford indirect protection to other products.”

⁷ Case 193/85, Co-Frutta v. Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato, 1987 ECR 2085.

⁸ Joined Cases C-228/90–234/90, C-339/90 and C-353/90, Simba v. Ministero delle Finanze, 1992 ECR 1–3713.

⁹ See Joined Cases 21–24/72, International Fruit Co. v. Produktschap voor Groenten en Fruit, 1972 ECR 1219. The doctrine established by the Court in IFC, which was rendered on December 12, 1972, has endured for more than two decades, informing the Court’s approach in all the subsequent cases in which it has had to deal with the relationship between GATT law and Community law.

The Court has held that an individual may rely on GATT norms to put the validity of a Community regulation into question if the Community act so challenged expressly refers to specific provisions of the GATT (Fediol doctrine), Case 70/87, Federation de l’lndustrie de l’huilerie de la CEE (Fediol) v. Commission, 1989 ECR 1781, or when by means of the Community act called into question the Community intended to implement a particular obligation entered into widiin the framework of the GATT (Nakajima doctrine), Case C-69/89, Nakajima All Precision Co. Ltd. v. Council, 1991 ECR 1–2069.

¹⁰ Slip op., para. 25.

¹¹ Case C-280/93, Germany v. Council, 1994 ECR 4973.

¹² Council Regulation 404/93 on the common organization of the market in bananas, 1993 O.J. (L 47) 1.

¹³ Germany v. Council, 1994 ECR 4973, para. 109.

¹⁴ Slip op., para. 26.

¹⁵ Id., para. 29.

¹⁶ Id., para. 30.

¹⁷ Id., para. 31.

¹⁸ Id., para. 32.

¹⁹ Id.

²⁰ Case 87/75, 1976 ECR 129.

²¹ Slip op., para. 35.

²² Protocol 5 on bananas to the Fourth ACP-EEC Convention, 1991 O.J. (L 229) 1, 213.

²³ See Opinion of Advocate General Lenz, para. 24, delivered on February 16, 1995, in Case C-469/93, Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v. SpA Chiquita Italia (not yet reported).

²⁴ Case 65/77, 1977 ECR 2229.

²⁵ The Court has declared dial the following bilateral international agreements may have direct effect: the Association Agreements with Greece and Portugal, the Association Agreement with Turkey, and the Cooperation Agreement with Morocco. See, respectively, Case 17/81, Pabst & Richarz KG v. Hauptzollamt Oldenbourg, 1982 ECR 1331; Case 104/81, Hauptzollamt Mainz v. CA. Kupferberg & Cie. KG aA., 1982 ECR 3641; Case C-192/89, S.Z. Sevince v. Staatssecretaris van Justitie, 1990 ECR 3461; Case C-18/90, Office National de l’Emploi v. Bahia Kziber, 1991 ECR 199.

²⁶ As noted, see text at note 20 supra, in Bresciani the Court granted direct effect to a provision of the Yaounde Convention of 1963.

²⁷ Opinion of Advocate General Lenz, supra note 23, para. 21.

²⁸ See 13 Int’l Trade Rep. (BNA) 1066 (1996). The United States made its first submission in relation to this case on July 9, 1996. Inside U.S. Trade, July 5, 1996, at 22.

²⁹ See GATT Dispute Settlement Panel, EEC—Import Regime for Bananas, GATT Doc. DS38/R (1994), cited in Jack J. Chen, Going Bananas: How the WTO Can Heal the Split in the Global Banana Trade Dispute, 63 Fordham L. Rev. 1282, 1297 (1995).

³⁰ Slip op., para. 21.

³¹ See Final Act Embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, Apr. 15, 1994, 33 ILM 1125 (1994).

³² According to Petersmann, this is “the most radical innovation of the WTO Agreement.” Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, The Dispute Settlement System of the World Trade Organization and the Evolution of the GATT Dispute Settlement System Since 1948, 31 Common Mkt. L. Rev. 1157, 1161 (1994).

³³ See Agreement Establishing the WTO, Art. XVI, Final Act, supra note 31, 33 ILM at 1144, 1152.

³⁴ See Fernando Castillo de la Torre, The Status of GATT in EC Law, Revisited. The Consequences of the Judgement on the Banana Import Regime for the Enforcement of the Uruguay Round Agreements, J. World Trade, Feb. 1995, at 53, 66; Pieter-Jan Kuyper, The New WTO Dispute Settlement System: The Impact on the Community, in The Uruguay Round Results—A European Lawyers’ Perspective 87, 104 (Jacques H.J. Bourgeois et al. eds., 1995) [hereinafter The Uruguay Round Results].

³⁵ For an excellent discussion of the pros and cons of the new dispute setdement procedures, see Judith H. Bello & Alan F. Holmer, Dispute Resolution in the World Trade Organization: Concerns and Net Benefits, 28 Int’l Law. 1095 (1994).

³⁶ “After the Uruguay Round, the panel procedure will look much like a judicial process.” Miquel Montana i Mora, A GATT with Teeth: Law Wins over Politics in the Resolution of International Trade Disputes, 31 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 103, 177 (1993).

³⁷ Some authors consider that the legalization introduced by the WTO Agreements will not necessarily prevent the ECJ from sticking to the arguments used in IFC. For example, “[m]y impression on this point is that, at least, the characteristics of the new DSP are not such as to impede the Court from transposing to the WTO its case-law on the absence of direct effect of GATT rules.” Christiaan W. A. Timmermans, The Implementation of the Uruguay Round by the EC, in The Uruguay Round Results, supra note 34, at 501, 504.

³⁸ See, e.g., Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, International and European Foreign Trade Law: GATT Dispute Settlement Proceedings against the EEC, 22 Common Mkt. L. Rev. 441, 486 (1985).

³⁹ See, e.g., Kuyper, supra note 34, at 104.

⁴⁰ See Case 104/81, Hauptzollamt Mainz v. C.A. Kupferberg & Cie. KG. a.A, 1982 ECR 3641.

⁴¹ Id. at 3664. As an astute commentator noted, in Kupferberg “the door is, however, left open for the reciprocity argument.” See Jacques H.J. Bourgeois, Effects of International Agreements in European Community Law: Are the Dice Cast?, 82 Mich. L. Rev. 1250, 1265 (1984).

⁴² I am grateful to Dr. Joaquín Cardona Llorens, Chair of the Department of International Law of Universitat Jaume I of Castelló (Spain), for drawing my attention to the actual significance of the equilibrium principle.

⁴³ Slip op., para. 32.