GENEVA, July 21: Australia, Brazil and Thailand lodged formal complaints at the World Trade Organization Monday against the European Union’s sugar subsidies, warning that they “grossly distort” the sugar trade, officials said.

The EU urged the three countries to reconsider their move and opposed their first requests to set up a panel of WTO experts to examine the complaint.

A first request is traditionally blocked by the defending country, but a second request is granted automatically at the next meeting of the WTO’s Disputes Settlement Body under the organization’s rules.

Once the panel is set up, the decision takes up to 12 months.

“This regime is characterised by import quotas, high tariffs, high domestic intervention prices and export subsidies. It grossly distorts world trade in sugar,” Brazilian ambassador Luis Felipe da Seixa Correa charged as his country lodged the complaint.

The move sparked concerns from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries that the complaints against the EU’s sugar regime would also affect preferential sugar quota arrangements granted to them by Brussels, trade officials said.

EU trade delegate Carlo Trojan warned that the complaints would be “introducing a major factor of instability for many sugar dependent countries” and could have an impact on the Doha development round of world trade talks.

But the three countries insisted they were not targeting the EU’s arrangements for ACP countries, which they said could be preserved even if their complaints are successful.

Australia announced July 8 that it would join Brazil and Thailand in formally challenging the EU sugar subsidies at the Geneva-based global trade body.—AFP