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EU details rules for Romania duty-free grain quotas

BRUSSELS: The European Commission has set financial guarantees that traders must pay to ship wheat and maize from Romania into the EU under a zero duty quota system to enter force this week, the EU's Official Journal said on Monday.

Guarantees payable to accompany import licences, which will be valid from the day of issue to the end of the following month, would be set at 30 euros a tonne, the Journal said.

"To ensure that imports of wheat and maize covered by these tariff quotas are orderly and not speculative, they should be made subject to the issue of import licences," it said.

"To ensure sound management of the quotas, the security on the import licences should be set at a relatively high level."

The duty-free quotas will come into force on April 1, comprising 130,000 tonnes of soft wheat and 74,500 tonnes of maize, and will run to the end of the season on June 30.

For the new 2003/04 season which begins on July 1, new quotas of 230,000 tonnes of soft wheat and 149,000 tonnes of maize will be opened.

Romania, like other EU applicants, has agreed bilateral farm liberalisation deals, known in EU jargon as "double profit" accords, designed to prepare them for joining the bloc.

Romania and Bulgaria are hoping to become EU members in 2007, three years after the 10 other mostly east European countries are due to join.

As with the other grain import quotas under double profit agreements, traders will submit their bids to Brussels on the second Monday of each month, the Journal said.-Reuters