Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the European farming industry facing more fundamental change than it has in decades, it could be said that funding research into ways of making this transformation less painless has to be a good thing. Whatever the view on this fairly facile assumption, the eyes of the agricultural sector should at least be partly turned on Brussels thus year, where debates for the preparation of a new five-year EU research programme are being staged.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GLOBAL trade in industrial goods could receive the same boost as is planned by the ongoing World Trade Organisation rounds in services and agriculture, if developed countries succeed in launching a new general round at the planned WTO ministerial conference, in Qatar, in November 9-13.…

KEITH NUTHALL
A CONCERTED international effort to clarify and tackle the harm caused by fishing subsidies on the conservation of wild fish stocks worldwide is to be launched following a seminar staged by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Concerns were raised by participants, which included more than 60 national governments, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, the World Trade Organisation UNCTAD, (the UN development agency), the International Labour Organisation and the OECD.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has set itself on a collision course with the European Commission, by amending the cosmetics directive to ban the sale within the EU of products tested on animals.

In a vote on plans by the Commission to ban animal testing within the EU, while allowing the sale of imported cosmetics that have been produced with such tests, MEP’s voted for a reinstatement of a ban that was agreed in 1993, but has never been implemented.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CHILEAN government has requested formal talks at the World Trade Organisation with Peru, over a sales tax regime for cigarettes, made from dark, premium bright and standard bright tobacco. The taxation varies for each of these categories by between S/0.025 (Peruvian Sol) to S/0.100 per unit, with higher amounts being charged for brands that are sold in three or more countries than for those sold in fewer countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PERFORMANCE of OLAF, the European Union’s new and supposedly independent anti-fraud office, has been criticised by the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee; it has suggested that it has not worked more effectively than its predecessor UCLAF, the European Commission’s in-house fraud busting unit.…

BY MIKE FOX, in Montreal
WINNEPEG, in the Canadian prairie province of Manitoba, may sound like the sort of city which would only merit a small regional airport, but the Winnipeg Airports Authority (WAA) has big plans to exploit its unique position.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE LOCAL Council – what are the worst images conjured up when thinking of those words?

Let me make it easy for you.

Lazy employees that take forever to process requests, generally unhelpful and bored, unfulfilling positions that can transform a new recruit full of fresh ideas and faith in the system, to the jaded staff that many of us have encountered at our local councils.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND MONICA DOBIE
THE NEW Zealand government has imposed a series of trade restrictions, because of Foot and Mouth, clamping down on imports of venison, cattle semen and dairy from the UK and beef from Argentina, among many other products.…

KEITH NUTHALL
FREIGHT forwarders may be freed of the burden of guaranteeing the payment of duty during EU transit operations, where hauliers transport goods across national borders in Europe, without paying duties or dealing with import procedures, except for the country where the consignment is delivered.…