It is still too early to predict all the consequences, but from the first few months of the new regime we can make the observations listed below. Download the full feature from Banana Trade News Bulletin issue 34/35 entitled 'The EU Banana Regime is Dead.' 

• For purely conjunctural reasons to do with the cold weather in Ecuador and the unprecedented storms which hit Central America in the second half of 2005, supply has been lower than demand and prices have remained high since late 2005; but nobody should be under the illusion that these record prices in January and February are thanks to the liberalisation of the EU market.
• Prices started to fall in March and most traders and analysts agree that the market could be heading for a price collapse. The real fear for producers is that, because there are no limits on third country volumes into the EU 25, prices may well never recover to pre-reform levels, as they have traditionally done in the last couple of months of the year.
• The consequences on the four million people whose livelihoods depend on export bananas will be straightforward: all banana exporting regions will see increasing poverty, in direct contradiction with the stated development goals of the European Union. The most affected will be the higher cost producers in the Caribbean and Latin America. In the worst case scenario, small farmers in the Windward Islands, Ecuador, Colombia and Jamaica will be the first victims, along with higher wage plantations in Panama, Costa Rica and possibly Colombia
• As predicted, the “cheapest” large-scale exporter, Ecuador, is sending and selling larger volumes to the EU-25. These will have a particular impact in the French and Spanish markets which have, until now, sold very small volumes of Latin American fruit. Relatively new world market entrants like Brazil or Peru are now in position to increase their volumes as much as the market can take, since access no longer bears any relation to their historical trading patterns. First time exporters like Bolivia, Angola, India or Sri Lanka can develop an industry and try to sell their bananas in Europe. The more any of these countries develop their industry, with or without the help of the multinationals, the sooner the world market will become saturated and the further prices will fall.
• In the first weeks of the year, on the ground in Ecuador, buyers made direct contacts with producers, including smaller farmers who did not have access to the EU market before; this can be viewed as positive, but is unlikely to last beyond the first signs of renewed oversupply.
• At the consumer end, there are signs of intensified retail price wars: in Belgium, for example, Carrefour started selling Latin American bananas at just 1 euro per kilo, an unsustainably low price. The company points out that this is in order to compete with the so called ‘hard discount’ supermarket chains like Aldi and Lidl which have entered most European consumer markets with rock bottom prices. See supermarkets section for more details. In the UK, Walmart subsidiary Asda launched a new round of price wars in March, cutting their loose banana price by a full 25 per cent to 1,40 euro per kg, the lowest level ever seen in the big four British supermarkets.
• The new vertically integrated Russian fruit companies are looking to move into the EU-25 market, with the potential to dump fruit and further depress internal EU prices.
• Meanwhile, the dispute in the WTO is far from resolved. Resolving the issue of WTO compatibility seemed to be the main justification driving the EU's rush to implement ‘tariffication’ by a deadline to which no trading partner was holding it. Several Latin American countries have already launched dispute settlement proceedings.

In short, the story is very far from over, and innovative solutions are going to have to be found at all levels to avoid what many of us have predicted for several years: an accelerated race to the bottom in which all except those with the least to lose in rich world consuming countries will suffer the consequences. Plantation workers’ unions and small farmers’ organisations have no shortage of proposed solutions, but those with the power to enable the necessary changes need to listen more and start to work alongside those whose livelihoods risk destruction.