Spain, France and Portugal will form a Joint Banana Committee that will allow the three countries to work together and on a regular basis to improve the future of their banana sector. This agreement is part of the meeting held by Minister Isabel GarcÃa Tejerina with her French and Portuguese counterparts, on January 15th in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, to discuss the future of agriculture in the outermost regions of the EU.
During this meeting, the importance of having a set of specific measures to provide effective and adequate support to agriculture in the outermost regions was highlighted
The Ministers of Agriculture of Spain, France and Portugal have highlighted the importance of the outermost regions for the three countries and their main instrument of European support, the POSEI (Program of Specific Options for Remoteness and Insularity). In this sense, they have agreed on the need to guarantee its maintenance in the future post-2020 European framework.
During the meeting, which also involved the representatives of the main professional organizations of the Canary Islands, Madeira, Guadeloupe and Martinique, and the European Association of Banana Producers (APEB), the Ministers decided to set up a “Joint Banana Committee”. This Committee will allow the three countries to work together and on a regular basis to improve the future of the French, Spanish and Portuguese banana sectors.
The first meeting of the Joint Banana Committee will take place in Paris, in the second half of 2018
In addition, the Ministers of the three countries have taken stock of the main issues of agricultural policy, such as the future reform of the CAP or the procedure opened by the US authorities against Spanish exports of table olives, on which they have found aligned positions.
Source: MAPAMA
