The European Union’s subsidised sugar exports are illegal. That’s the ruling from the World Trade Organization, following two appeals and nearly two years since the case was originally brought by Brazil, Thailand and Australia.
The subsidies, originally intended to allow farmers in the EU to compete on world markets, depress world prices, so tropical producers cannot compete. To make matters worse, the EU imports more sugar from developing nations than the US, Canada, Japan and Australia combined, then processes and re-exports a lot of it.
Despite promising in the 1980s to cut subsidised exports to 1.3 million tonnes, the EU…
