Search Results for: Climate change

BY KEITH NUTHALL

The latest proposed reforms to create a harmonised and modernised EU customs code could increase duties on branded food imported from outside the EU.

They could boost the customs valuation of these goods, inflating ad valorem tariffs; one change would ban the use of the ‘first sale for export’ for valuations, where importers declare the price a foreign exporter paid to a local supplier before shipping the goods to Europe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

PLANNED reforms to create a harmonised and modernised European Union (EU) customs code could force EU personal care product importers to pay higher customs duties. The European Commission is proposing ban importers from declaring the price that a foreign exporter paid to a local supplier before they shipped the goods to Europe, which could be less than the price paid by the eventual European customer.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has launched formal disputes proceedings at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to challenge Chinese export restrictions on key raw materials, including six non-ferrous metals (or key inputs). Brussels is upset Beijing is preventing the free sale abroad of bauxite, fluorspar, magnesium, manganese, silicon metal and zinc (and some other non-metallic minerals).…

BY GERARD O’DWYER

THE EXODUS of the McDonald’s restaurant franchise from Iceland may have captured the international headlines. But the rest of the island nation’s food sector and 300 production companies face a great deal of change, uncertainty, debt financing challenges and initiatives driven by cost-reduction imperatives, particularly small to medium-sized enterprises.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

THE Mexican government under President Felipe Calderón has two serious problems: its fight against illicit drugs; and reducing the country’s dependence on its troubled national oil industry. Alternative energy projects are springing up throughout the country including those involving biofuels, solar energy, wind power and landfill gas-to-energy systems.…

BY MARK ROWE

SHOWROOMS full of Bentleys and Ferraris continue to grace Moscow’s most salubrious boulevards, in a display of purchasing power that suggests global recession is a world away. The reality is somewhat different: the mainstream Russian car market has taken a swinging blow from economic collapse, its fortunes plummeting almost overnight.…

BY RUSSELL BERMAN

WHILE the year-old Obama administration has brought a wave of new and proposed regulations for the US financial sector, it has used its anti-money laundering (AML) arm to target an area in which financial crimes have spiked during the economic crisis: mortgage and loan modification fraud.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A MAJOR shake up of European Union (EU) fuel taxation could be unveiled in the New Year, with the European Commission drafting proposals to insist duties are adjusted to take account of the climate change impact of transport.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has rolled all existing 55 EU directives controlling the marketing and safety of cosmetics products into one comprehensive regulation. The change makes these EU rules compulsory across the EU, without allowing member states the leeway of interpretation allowed under directives.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE POWER of photographs to inspire sustainable development has been highlighted in a UN Development Programme (UNDP) contest. The ‘Picture This: Caring for the Earth’ competition, organised with the Olympus Corporation and the Agence France-Presse (AFP) was designed to show how "ordinary people work to preserve the environment and reduce the effects of climate change in their communities", said a UNDP note.…