Costa Rica is supporting Ecuador's latest move in the World Trade Organization to challenge the European Union's refusal to lower tariffs on banana imports from this region, trade officials said Wednesday.

“All the producing countries feel tricked,” Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz said of Latin America's dismay at the EU's failure to meet an agreement signed during the July 2008 Doha round. “(European nations) have left Latin American exporters totally defenseless.”

Ecuador and Costa Rica, the world's second- and third-largest banana exporters respectively, after Philippines, have condemned the EU's preferential treatment toward former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific in allowing duty-free, quota-free access into the European market, while maintaining tariffs for Latin American countries.

Last year, countries in this region signed an agreement with the EU that says Europe would reduce its tax on bananas imported from Latin America from €176 ($229) to €114 ($148) a ton from 2009 to 2014.

The tariff was supposed to drop to €148 ($193) on Jan. 1, but the EU argued that the agreement was no longer binding as it was reached during a Doha round that broke down. Ruiz said the issue will be key during a meeting between Central American trade officials and the European Commission representative Catherine Ashton set for Monday in Brussels, Belgium.

“Central American countries must be united around this issue,” Ruiz told reporters Wednesday.