Bananas: common organisation of the market COM

The European Parliament adopted this proposal for a regulation with the amendments adopted at the sitting of 13 December 1996 and the compromise amendments drawn up by the rapporteur, Mr Giacomo SANTINI (UPE, I), following his meetings with Commissioner Franz FISCHLER. It should be noted that during the plenary sitting of 13 December 1996 the legislative resolution was not put to the vote because of the refusal of Commissioner FISCHLER to accept the European Parliament's amendments. The report was therefore referred back to committee. Parliament proposed a tariff quota of 2 300 000 tonnes of bananas from third country and non-traditional ACP countries in order to meet demand following the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden (the Commission provided for a total volume of 2 553 000 tonnes) and maintained the current division of this quota between operators who marketed third country and/or non traditional ACP bananas (66.5%), operators who marketed Community and traditional ACP bananas (30%) and new operators (3.5%). It also called for (compromise amendment) the establishment of a mechanism to remedy loss suffered by an operator (e.g. reduction of his reference quantity) in the event of force majeure and not because of exceptional circumstances (the concept of force majeure is understood as serious internal political, economic, social or institutional crisis, endemic civil war and/or the lack of a government). One amendment also stressed that small producers who operate under conditions constituting an outstanding model from the ecological and social point of view (fair trade producers) should be given greater access to the Union market by means of appropriate information and promotion measures (compromise amendment). �