Search Results for: World Trade Organisation⊂mit=Search

BY KEITH NUTHALL
OFFICIALS from the United States and European Union have been meeting to solve differences over the Americans’ Container Security Initiative. The EU and the US have agreed to quickly explore signing a cooperation deal on operating a mutually acceptable container security system, but problems remain, for instance on the proposed US 24 hours rule, requiring carriers to provide American customs with cargo manifest information a day before it is loaded on board a USA-bound vessel.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PROBLEM for farmers when considering how to influence international negotiations that are as long, complicated and important as the scheduled five years of discussions over updating the World Trade Organisation’s agriculture agreement, is knowing when to spend money on lobbyists to intervene.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN collective wine marketing systems are “insufficient and ill-suited to market requirements compared to those of wine-growing companies in the

new world wine producing countries:” this is one of the main conclusions of a

seminar last week (28 and 29 November) organised by COPA-COGECA, the

association of European agricultural co-operative organisations and the

CEV, Europe’s association for the wine industry and trade.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A RESTRICTED trade in knitted products from wool culled from captured wild vicuna in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile has been approved by a conference of parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TOO many cooks spoil the broth. Or do they? As far as the world’s fight against money laundering is concerned, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund think that they can bring extra flavour to the struggle waged by the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force (FATF).…

BY DENMARK FINCH AND FRITZ BRETT
INTRO

REDUCING stress amongst employees at work can make a major improvement to the bottom line of companies; indeed, so expensive is the problem, says the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, it is thought to cost the EU at least Euro 20 billion a year in lost time and health costs and affect more than 40 million of its employees.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SUCCESSFUL negotiations between the European Commission and the governments of Cambodia and Nepal have led to a deal over the extension of existing textile trade agreements between these Asian kingdoms and the European Union (EU). The Commission has asked European ministers to formally agree that these agreements should be prolonged until December 2004, appending a new list of textile products that can be imported into the EU without any quota limits.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IT is rare that an international organisation report on a scandal involving crime, corruption, war and environmental degradation names and shames high profile companies, but that is what is contained within the latest United Nations (UN) Security Council report on the Congo.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has ordered the British government to reform Gibraltar’s offshore company taxation rules by ensuring its ‘Exempt Company’ regime is phased out by December 2005 at the latest. Its action follows an inquiry, which led to the Commission concluding that the tax system constituted illegal state aid, banned under EU law because it unfairly favours one European company over another.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DOUBLE checking systems introduced by the European Union to police steel trade systems struck with eastern European countries who now want to become Member States are to be indefinitely extended. The European Commission has proposed that these monitoring systems be maintained in place to guard against illicit steel exports from the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland and Slovakia until they are finally accepted as formal members of the EU.…