Search Results for: Russia

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers yesterday (Mon, June 28) approved the new steel trade deal that has been negotiated by the European Commission with the Russian government. It creates import quotas for a wide range of steel products that can be sold into the EU market by Russian producers until December 31, 2006, or the date Moscow joins the World Trade Organisation (WTO), if it happens earlier, although this is unlikely.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is lending US$32.5 million to a subsidiary of Turkey’s Anadolu Cam group to build a glass bottling plant, near Ufa, central Russia. Ruscam-Ufa LLC will use the loan to fund half the US$65 million project, which said EBRD agribusiness director Hans Christian Jacobsen would improve the “quality of glass packaging offered to food and beverage producers in central and eastern Russia”.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT’S coming up to 18 months since the French tobacco industry was hit by the last of a triple whammy of excise tax increases over a single year and it seems a reasonable moment to take stock. The three tax increases – 10% in January 2003, 20% in November 2003 and 10% in January 2004 – were part of a health drive by Jacques Chirac’s government, worried by the continued popularity of smoking among young people among other things.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE RUSSIAN government has accepted a 1993 international ban on the dumping of radioactive wastes at sea, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has announced. It means all 81 contracting members of the 1972 London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter have formally promised to cease maritime nuclear dumping.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released details of the steel trade deal that it negotiated earlier this year with the Ukraine. The agreement will run until December 2006, or whenever the Ukraine joins the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if that comes earlier, mirroring a similar deal with Russia.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A WORLD Bank report has called on governments in central/eastern Europe and central Asia to improve the efficiency of their judicial systems, improving the enforcement of decisions and making judges more accountable. It also calls for a reduction in case backlogs and judicial corruption.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States and Russia have signed an agreement guaranteeing access to Russian markets by American poultry, beef and pork producers. It creates special tariff quotas for US exporters, with higher duties being levied on excess shipments. The deal also covers the allocation and distribution of import licences, plus sanitary issues.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
COOPERATION between the European Union (EU) and Russia will be intensified regarding constructing energy infrastructure projects of joint interest, under a detailed “road-map” approved in Moscow. Russian president Vladimir Putin, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso and EU council president Jean-Claude Juncker signed the deal, which also highlights improving the safe transport of energy products, “by pipeline, rail and sea”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said that pledges totalling US$200 million were made at this month’s (May) donor meeting in London for the Chernobyl Shelter Fund, which it manages. The European Union (EU) and G8 countries offered US$185 million of this money, with Russia contributing for the first time.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WIDE-RANGING joint-actions involving the European Union (EU) and Russia in terms of environmental policy has been agreed in a cooperation deal forged at a summit in Moscow. Russian president Vladimir Putin, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso and current EU council president Jean-Claude Juncker, of Luxembourg, struck the deal.…