Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s legal affairs committee has proposed amendments to the European Commission’s latest proposed tobacco advertising directive, liberalising its effect. MEPs want to limit the directive to cases with ‘significant trans-border effects’ and to permit advertising indirectly related to tobacco.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE CANADIAN provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador is launching legal action against tobacco manufacturers seeking the recovery of health care costs incurred because of smoking, a lawsuit it agreed in principle to pursue in 1999.

Humphrey, Farrington & McClain, of Independence, Missouri, in the USA, has taken the case, for a cut of any damages.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WORLD Health Organisation member governments have been meeting from October 14-25 to press ahead with the development of a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The fifth session of the Inter-governmental Negotiating Body examined a draft created from discussions held over the past four years on the advertising, promotion, sales and smuggling of tobacco.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation has produced a Tobacco Atlas, produced with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, USA. It provides statistics such as the differences between countries and genders regarding consumption, the conduct of the tobacco companies, investments by tobacco industry, the costs of tobacco use, illicit trade and litigation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) anti-fraud unit OLAF has claimed cigarette smugglers have developed sophisticated tactics to evade growing law enforcement cooperation between the EU and non-EU countries. OLAF’s latest annual report said: “Because of the sizeable profits….it is no hardship to fraudsters to move containers of cigarettes through several countries, and unload and reload the cigarettes several times.”…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has formally approved the continuation of anti-dumping duties on polyester synthetic staple fibres, including those on polyester filament tow, albeit at a lower rate of 21 per cent. The decision follows a European Commission review of the duties, which concluded that the rate of dumping by Khimvolokno Industrial Group VSV Trading Co had lowered.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FUTURE of US tariff preferences for Cambodian clothing exports looks guaranteed for another year, after an International Labour Organisation gave the country another relatively clean bill of health regarding working standards in its garment industry. While stressing problems regarding wages, overtime and unions, the UN agency concluded improvements were made to working conditions in various factories following earlier reports.…

BY MARK ROWE
INDONESIAN textile producers have warned that their industry faces thousands of job losses as smuggled used garments flood the Indonesian market. The past few months have seen a rise in smuggled goods from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the United States and some European countries.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN Union agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler has resisted an attempt by the Greek government to bypass the European Commission in its bid to pay state aid to cotton producers. Greece asked a meeting of the EU Council of Ministers for agriculture to consider the matter as it has the power to authorise the payments.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has given the European Commission a mandate to open negotiations on the renewal of two Agreements on Trade in Textile Products, between the EU and the Cambodian and Nepali governments.…