Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BETS are off over whether the new code on maritime safety and security agreed by the International Maritime Organisation this month will actually allow insurance companies to reduce the premiums that they charge shipping companies and ports.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
NEW rules changing the place of taxation for VAT purposes of natural gas and electricity have been proposed by the European Commission “so as to facilitate the functioning of the single market for energy.” Brussels said the proposal would eliminate the current problems of double taxation and non-taxation and distortions of competition between traders by changing the place of taxation of natural gas in pipelines and of electricity from the place of supply to the place of consumption.…

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 MARK ROWE
WARS are usually fought over coveted resources, such as oil, diamonds or fertile land. Now water, the most indispensable of mankind’s needs, is seen as the resource which may spark the armed conflicts of the 21st century.

Indeed, United Nations (UN) cultural and scientific organisation UNESCO is stepping up efforts to calm tension in some of the world’s most water-stressed areas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has speeded up its establishment of a European Maritime Safety Agency, which has been delayed because of disagreements within the EU Council of Ministers over the seat of its secretariat. As a result, the Commission has convened the inaugural meeting of the agency’s administrative board in its own Brussels offices, without waiting for a decision on where the organisation will be houses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL agreement has been signed to develop a new combination anti-malaria drug. Called pyronaridine-artesunate, it will be jointly developed by the Tropical Diseases Research Programme, the Medicines for Malaria Venture and South Korea’s Shin Poong Pharmaceuticals. It could be registered by early 2006.…

KEITH NUTHALL
CANADA has joined formal World Trade Organisation (WTO) disputes talks initiated by Brazil against the United States regarding American government subsidies to producers, users and exporters of upland cotton. The Brazilians claim that these payments break the WTO’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, Agreement on Agriculture, and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has set out its stall at the World Trade Organisation’s agricultural liberalisation talks, offering the US and other key trading partners the carrot of a 55 per cent cut in “trade distorting domestic farm support” subsidies, if they reciprocate with similar reductions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Maritime Organisation will next week (9-13 Dec) stage a Diplomatic Conference that should agree a new International Code for the Security of Ships and Port Facilities. This is to be attached as an annexe to this United Nations (UN) agency’s International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), and should come into force by next June, assuming there are no significant objections from any of the 146 IMO member countries which have already accepted SOLAS.…

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.…