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BY KEITH NUTHALL
A RESIDENCY qualification for directors of companies established in the Alpine Principality of Liechtenstein, set up to help its authorities fight abuse of its liberal business laws, including money laundering, has been declared illegal.

The European Free Trade Area Court has ruled that the regulation discriminates against citizens of other EFTA countries, (Switzerland, Iceland and Norway), breaching fair trade treaty commitments made by Liechtenstein on joining the association.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL organisation is to be set up later this year to help developing country governments negotiate better deals for drug access, as well as helping local researchers to protect their ideas from being poached. The MIHR, (Management of Intellectual property in Health Research and development), will be set up by public health and intellectual property experts from Britain and the Netherlands, with the assistance of experts from Asia, Africa, south America and north America.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPLIT has emerged in the European Union Council of Ministers over the possible scrapping of subsidies to tobacco producers under a possible review the common market regime, which should happen this year. On one side in a debate at a recent agriculture council were a group including many of the EU’s tobacco growing countries, (Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France, Greece, Spain and Portugal), who are opposed to cuts, whilst other Member States, (notably Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden), backed a recital to a current proposal to adjust subsidies over the next two years that calls on the EU to review the regime this year “to allow the progressive deletion of subsidies.”…

Keith Nuthall
INDIA V USA

THE EUROPEAN Union and Bangladesh are to join formal World Trade Organisation talks launched by India, which is challenge changes made by the USA to its rules of origin legislation, that New Delhi claims favour the American and European Union textile industries, unfairly discriminating against Indian producers.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE ORGANISATION for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has issued formal guidelines to its (mostly rich and often European) member governments to use their financial muscle when striking contracts for electricity supplies and power projects generally, to impose conditions that favour environmental good practice.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development has approved a Euro 20 million loan for Lithuania, to improve the energy efficiency measures of a range of public buildings. Consultants are to help Vilnius prepare an action plan for making the improvements, starting work in May.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has asked EU ministers to extend until December 2009 special tax advantages offered by the German government to Hochtemperatur-Kernkraftwerk GmbH to enable the company to completely dismantle Uentrop nuclear power station, shut down since 1989.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE CO-GENERATION of electricity from waste oil is being promoted in the European Union through excise duty exemptions, which have been erected in the face of official EU environmental policy, a new European Commission report says.

Its “Critical Review of Existing Studies and Life Cycle Analysis on the Regeneration and Incineration of Waste Oils” points out that Council Directive 75/439/EC on Waste Oils tries to make Member States prioritise regeneration over burning.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE INTRODUCTION of the Euro as a retail currency in 12 EU countries at the beginning of the year has done virtually nothing to level out the wide variations in new car prices between them, the European Commission said today (Monday).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been given authority by European Union Council of Ministers (finance) to negotiate a comprehensive “Governing International Fisheries Agreement” with the USA. A Brussels official in the Commission’s directorate general for fisheries told Fishing News International that a future deal could lead to EU fishing crews being given access to fish US waters and for European factory ships to be allowed to buy stocks from American fishermen at sea.…