A. HAVING REGARD to the Geneva Agreement on Trade in Bananas concluded in Geneva on 15 December 2009, between the European Union (EU) and some Latin American countries and the United States of America;

B. HAVING REGARD to the Regulation of the European Parliament and EU Council establishing the Banana Accompanying Measures (BAM), adopted on 13 December 2011, which confirms the allocation of 190 million euros for the implementation of these measures, as well as the promised allocation of an additional 10 million d’euros;

C. RECALLING with interest that the ACP countries concerned by the BAM have all submitted National Adaptation Strategies (NAS) approved by the European Union, and that the Multiannual Support Strategies, which represent the BAM contribution to the implementation of the NAS, have in turn been approved for all the selected countries;

D. NOTING that information sharing has been initiated between the European Commission and the various stakeholders involved in actions linked to the BAM;

E. DEEPLY CONCERNED at the delay by the European Commission in disbursing the resources allocated for setting up the BAM, thereby undermining the expected effectiveness of these measures;

F. RECALLING the commitment made by Commissioner Karel De Guth in his letter to the ACP Coordinating Minister for Bananas, dated 15 December 2009, to allocate additional budget support of 10 million euros for ACP banana-producing countries;

G. CONCERNED about the continuation of the diversification policy for the banana sector in the various banana-producing ACP countries;

H. RECALLING that the last Paragraph of Article 1, line 2, of the Regulation (EU) N°1341/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council which established the BAM, provides that " the BAM Programme and the progress made by the countries concerned shall be the subject of an assessment, which shall include recommendations on any to be taken and the nature thereof", and that this rendez-vous clause echoes the idea contained in the European Commission’s letter of 15 December 2009 to the Minister/ACP Spokesman for Bananas in the framework of the arrangements for the conclusion of the Geneva Agreement on Trade in Bananas of December 2009, and formalised in the revised Cotonou Agreement of 2010, for all aid programmes set up to address the problem of preference erosion;

I. CONCERNED by the continued proliferation of trade agreements linking the European Commission to rival countries or regions of the ACP banana-producing countries and the consequences of such agreements on the exports of ACP banana-exporting countries;

J. DEEPLY CONCERNED by the alarming information circulated on the Panama disease detected in Mozambique in November 2013;

K. ENCOURAGES the European Union, once again, to provide support for its researchers so as to support the formulation and implementation of the strategies to diversify the sector; and

L. UNDERSCORING the need to address value-addition and support the formulation and implementation of diversification strategies in the ACP commodity sector;

1. Calls on the European Union to envisage a more inclusive approach to information sharing among all the beneficiary countries and their representatives in Brussels, especially regarding the European Union’s objectively-verifiable indicators for the implementation of the BAM;

2. Further call on the European Union, in this regard, to make use of the facilities and exceptions offered by its budgetary procedures and thereby facilitate the absorption of resources by the beneficiaries ;

3. Encourages ACP banana-producing countries to improve their consultations and exchange of informations on the implementation of the BAM in the respective countries with the diplomatic missions in Brussels and Geneva;

4. Reiterates to the European Union the need to refrain from adopting a definitive position on future support to the ACP banana sector before the results of the implementation of the BAM are known;

5. Invites the Working Group on Bananas, in conjunction with the ACP Secretariat, to quickly take stock of the provision of the BAM resources in the various beneficiary countries and to report to the next Council session;

6. Reiterates the need to review the situation in the ACP banana sector, given the new risks to competitiveness as represented by the additional trade benefits proposed by the European Commission to third countries that are rivals of the ACP banana-producing countries, since the review of the developments on the banana market is part of the package of the Geneva Agreement on Trade in Bananas, as particularly reflected in the letter sent by the two European Commissioners to the ACP Ministerial spokesman on Bananas;

7. Invites the European Commission and the ACP Secretariat to begin discussions to include the issue of bananas among the priority areas in the framework of the programming of the 11th EDF;

8. Reiterates to the ACP Secretariat the importance of paying adequate attention to the issue of bananas in the support provided to banana-producing Member States; and

9. Instructs the President of the Council of Ministers to forward this resolution to the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, EU Member States, and the European Commission.

Nairobi, 18 June 2014