Search Results for: China

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ANDRIS Piebalgs, the European Union (EU) Commissioner for energy, has announced that clean coal technologies and CO2 capture will be his top priorities for energy research during his five-year term. Speaking as the European Commission attempts to persuade EU ministers to support expanding Brussels’ budget for research for 2007-13, Piebalgs said: “Such technologies are not just important in order to enable Europe to meet its Kyoto obligations and the challenges of the (EU’s) Lisbon agenda” on economic competitiveness.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MARKET liberalisation and other reforms associated with China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation are delivering gains exceeding US$40 billion annually to its economy, although these are unevenly distributed between rural and urban regions, said a World Bank assessment.…

BY LIZ HALL
A PROFUSION of family-run businesses, corrupt and under-resourced authorities and low wages has traditionally meant much commercial crime goes undetected in Latin America. But the tide is turning, with more and more companies unwilling to turn a blind eye to fraud, bribery and counterfeit goods production.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL initiative to raise Asian food safety standards to those required by the European Union (EU) for imports has been launched with the support of the European Commission. It is donating Euro 597,000 to the SELAMAT project to create a network of European and Asian food institutes, swapping information and best practice on meeting EU health-based food regulations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) clothing retailers can expect to see restrictions being imposed on Chinese imports, although measures announced by the European Commission have been attacked as “too little too late” by the EU manufacturing industry. As expected, the abolition of textile trade quotas in January under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules have sparked a surge in Chinese clothing exports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS the May 31 deadline looms for World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries to make formal offers to liberalise their service industries, the Comité Européen des Assurances (CEA) has called on Brazil, India and China to be as generous as they can.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
TASMANIA’S non-ferrous metals industry is enjoying a welcome resurgence with strong production targets for the next five to ten years.

Miners in Australia’s island state are reluctant to call it a “metals rush” but it is the most significant set of resource finds for more than 100 years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed imposing definitive anti-dumping duties on imports into the European Union (EU) of polyester staple fibres from China and Saudi Arabia. It has also proposed extending (at a lower level) duties imposed against South Korea in 2000 and scrapping 13% duties levied since 1999 on Taiwanese exporters, who are now dumping at very low levels, said the Commission.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
PRESIDENT George W Bush’s re-election last November has pretty well ruled out any change in the US ban on Cuban cigars for the next four years – if anything, things are likely to get tougher. One of the last things the previous Bush administration did last October was to actually tighten the import ban by barring Americans travelling to Cuba from bringing back up to US$100 dollars worth of Cuban cigars.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
PROPOSALS for a new European Union (EU) wine regime, which are currently under review, will be unveiled in 12 months’ time according to the recently installed European Commissioner for agriculture, Mrs Mariann Fischer Boel.

In a wide-ranging interview in her Brussels office she admitted that the present arrangements are not working.…