Search Results for: European Court of Justice

BY MARK ROWE
THE EUROPEAN Union has given itself until the end of this month (May) to make a crunch decision over whether to further subsidise the future insurance of the continent’s airlines in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, in New York last September.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has warned that world cotton prices are likely to be depressed should the US Congress approve the US Farm Bill as currently framed. The law will increase subsidies to American growers, boosting flat rate payments, loans guaranteeing farmers a fixed price for their crop and grants providing farms with an overall minimum income.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has welcomed the confirmation by Palestinian president Yasser Arafat of a law guaranteeing the independence of his nascent state’s judiciary. Brussels wants a reconstituted Palestinian authority to be more democratic and transparent than the government so comprehensively dislocated by Israel and has been imposing conditions on the Arafat administration for the resumption of full-scale EU aid, including the establishment of real judicial independence.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FOR years, the US government has played Mary Poppins on agricultural subsidies, claiming that its handouts do not encourage farmers to overproduce when prices are low. Now it is not really trying to pretend.

The mask has not just slipped, it has been casually pulled off and tossed aside.…

BY PHILIP FINE

CLASS-ACTION status has been granted by the US Federal Court to a group of 30,000 workers who allege sweatshop conditions in clothing factories in Saipan. The Pacific Island has US territorial status, making it immune to tariffs and able to affix US origin labels to clothing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN is the only country in the European Union that is not on course to meet its targets on the reduction of greenhouse gases, according to a report from the European Environment Agency.

The UK’s emissions of greenhouse gases rose by 0.4 per cent in 1999-2000, mainly due to an expansion in power generation from fossil fuels, especially coal.…

KEITH NUTHALL
AQUACULTURE takes centre stage in the new proposals for reforming the European Union Common Fisheries Policy in which the need to conserve dwindling wild fish stocks is clearly recognised. With Brussels moving to limit and reduce the size of fishing fleets, the European Commission’s new ‘road map’ for a reviewed CFP highlights fish farming as “a valuable alternative source of employment in coastal areas as well as offering quality fisheries products to consumers.”…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
ROTHMANS, Benson & Hedges Inc. has launched a legal bid to overturn the Saskatchewan provincial government’s recent Tobacco Control Act, which bans the display in shops of tobacco products.

The case filed in the prairie province’s Court of Queen’s Bench, claims that the legislation that came into effect on March 11, 2002, violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and federal tobacco legislation.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has formally proposed stripping immunity from existing EU anti-dumping duties on imports of Polish pallets enjoyed by seven companies, who will henceforth, (assuming EU ministers agree the move), pay the tariffs. Six of the companies were found to have broken promises not to dump pallets on the EU market, while one is an associated company.…

BY MARK ROWE
IT may have taken riots in Seattle and Genoa but the World Trade Organisation has finally come out all compassionate. The theory is simple. Most of the world’s poor are in developing nations. Many of those in greatest poverty are farmers.…