Question 8801 — foreign trade

Summary

Mr. Grégoire de Fournas questions the Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty on the aspect relating to tomatoes of the trade agreement between the European Union and Morocco. Entered into force on October 1, 2012, the agreement between the EU and Morocco relating to reciprocal liberalization measures relating to agricultural products, processed agricultural products, fish and fishing products contains a set of provisions moving towards total liberalization. For its part, the tomato is included on a so-called “negative” list, which allows exceptions in trade agreements on “sensitive” products due to competition with Spanish tomatoes in particular. Moroccan tomato exports must respect a conventional “entry price” of 0.461 euros/kg from October 1 to May 31. This system is supposed to protect European agricultural sectors against low-priced imports. While it was previously left to the choice of the importer, the determination of the method of calculating this entry price must, since 2014, be done systematically on the basis of the flat-rate import value (VFI). However, Moroccan tomato producers have since turned away from round tomatoes, which constituted the majority of exports at the time, to produce “cherry” tomatoes. The new weighted average on this new basis is therefore increased, because it takes into account this growing share of “cherry” tomatoes with higher added value. Exports have in fact increased from 300 tonnes per year 15 years ago to more than 124,000 tonnes in 2021, out of a total of nearly 360,000 tonnes of tomatoes. With this calculation method, the average price passes always and well above the minimum entry price (46.1 euros/100kg) and limits the “additional specific duties” that Moroccan producers would have to pay. This calculation method therefore proved ineffective and ineffective for the surveillance and protection of the European market against Moroccan imports. The MP asks the Minister if he intends to defend the establishment of three regimes entry customs regulations specific to each category of tomatoes: round, cherry and other varieties, as urgently expected by French producers. He also asks him if he intends to request and defend an update of entry prices, the latter dating from the year 2000, as well as their indexation to inflation.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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