Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has rejected a bid by Britain’s Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco to annul European Union Directive 2001/37/EC on the composition and designation of cigarettes on the grounds that its commercial restrictions were illegally based on freedom of trade powers.…

KEITH NUTHALL
SWITZERLAND has donated US$2.5 million to a new international BioTrade Facilitation Programme which will fund the development of export industries in poor countries based on under-exploited natural resources, notably fibre plants. The scheme will be run by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and its International Trade Centre joint venture with the World Trade Organisation.…

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 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
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
EU ministers have ordered that new textile trade agreements agreed between the European Commission and Cambodia and Nepal be provisionally implemented from January 1, pending formal ratification. All parties agree they should last until December 2004.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AMERICA’S National Milk Producers Federation has come out against a

recently-announced free trade agreement between Australia and the United

States. Next February, the two governments will be entering trade negotiations, with the goal of completing a bilateral free trade pact by 2004.…

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 PHILIP FINE AND KEITH NUTHALL

THE US government has unveiled plans to push for freer trade in footwear at the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round of trade negotiations. The Bush administration has announced that it would like to see an end to non-rubber footwear tariff and non-tariff barriers worldwide within 10 years.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE AMERICAN tobacco unit of cigarette giant Philip Morris has launched civil legal cases against a number of small shop retailers in the USA who it alleges have been selling counterfeit Marlboro cigarettes. The company has instigated 15 lawsuits against 88 retailers after undercover agents for Philip Morris USA purchased cigarettes and then had them tested.…