The EC Banana Regime and Judicial Control

The notorious saga of the European Community (EC) banana regime has involved three conflicting levels of adjudication: 1. the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade organization (WTO), 2. the European Court of Justice for the European Communities (ECJ), and 3. EC Member States' courts. These different fora have not rendered complementary decisions, but rather complicated the matter further. This article review the banana dispute before the GATT/WTO, the ECJ and national courts in order to compare the judicial control of each process over the EC trade measure.