Before the setting up of the Single European Market (SEM) in 1993, several national arrangements to regulate the import of bananas existed in the European Economic Community (EEC). Below are summaries of the various arrangements of the then members of the EEC:

• France and the United Kingdom
  Bananas from the overseas departments (Martinique and Guadeloupe) and several ex-colonies of these two countries (Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, the Windward Islands, Jamaica and Belize) entered the French and British markets tariff-free. The latter belong to the ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) Group, which had signed the Lomé Convention with the EEC in 1975. Latin American bananas on the other hand, could not be imported without nationally-issued licences and the payment of a ‘common external tariff’ of 20% of import value.
• Spain and Greece
  These two countries produced their own bananas in sufficient quantities for their own consumption, in the Canary Islands and Crete respectively.
• Portugal and Italy
  Portugal was able to meet 40% of its consumption with domestic production in the islands of Madeira and the Azores, whilst Italy bought from its ex-colony Somalia. Most of their bananas came from Latin America and entered their markets with the 20% tariff.
• Germany
  One of the last clauses - the so-called "Adenauer Clause" - negotiated as part of the Treaty of Rome, the founding treaty of the European Economic Community signed in 1961, provided an exception for Latin American bananas imported into Germany. These entered the country tariff-free, and did so until 30 June 1993 when the SEM banana regime came into operation.
• Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxemburg and Ireland
  All bananas imported by these countries entered their markets with a 20% tariff. As the Single European Market (SEM) came into force on 1 January 1993 and as borders disappeared inside the Union, it was necessary to invent a harmonised regime applicable to all member countries. After much debate as to how to take into account the various 'needs', the European Union (EU) set up, six months after the rest of the SEM on 1 July 1993, the Common Organisation of the Market in Bananas (COMB), commonly referred to as the European banana regime. Those countries with ex-colonies or overseas territories dependent on their markets insisted that the new regime should give preferential access to ACP countries and subsidise EU producers. Germany, a keen defender of free access to the European market, was forced to give in.