ABSTRACT
The ‘Everything but Arms’ (EBA) initiative of 2001 has made three notable exceptions to its commitment for duty-free and quota-free (DFQF) access of least developed countries (LDCs) to the EU market: longer transition periods have been imposed for sugar, bananas, and rice. Despite the delayed opening of the EU market for EBA sugar, it is precisely sugar that presently constitutes the highest preferential value for LDCs – at least in the short and medium term and given the present high EU sugar price under the current Common Market Organization (CMO) for sugar. This European price for sugar is more than €600 per tonne, which is more than three times the world market price. The EU itself projected that the EBA exports would attain 3.3 million tonnes per year in 2013 at a value of almost €2 billion. 1
