Search Results for: Dutch caribbean

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EARLIER this year, European Union (EU) competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes promised to review the competitiveness of the EU insurance industry; she is now delivering. The special review to “identify and remove remaining barriers to free competition” in business insurance announced last week is unusual for a traditionally reactive Commission competition directorate, regulating proposed cross-border mergers and acquisitions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has opened a formal investigation into a planned Euro 7.425 million-subsidy package planned by the Dutch government into its country’s malt sector. The money would help establish a malt production plant in Eemshaven, in the Netherlands’ roningen province.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
WHILE the consumption of paint, ink and colourings in Belgium is, like that in most other European countries, best described as “stable”, the country’s production industry is eying opportunities to relocate in cheaper regions, such as eastern Europe.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
ACCORDING to global consumption figures, Israel is the world capital of teenage soft drink demand, with hot weather combined with a competitive market to create something of a utopia for drinks companies. An international survey of soft drinks consumption published by the Economist by 15 year olds of both sexes suggests that Israel has the world’s biggest teenage consumers of carbonated and still drinks, colas, sodas, juices and the like on a per capita basis.…

Keith Nuthall
LISTED companies within the European Union (EU) may escape plans to force their appointment of mandatory audit committees that oversee their accounts, after the idea was rejected by MEPs. The European Parliament’s legal affairs committee has approved amendments that would abolish this requirement, after accepting arguments pushed by Dutch Christian Democrat MEP Lambert Doorn.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GLOBAL sugar industry will scrutinise the text of an appeal verdict issued yesterday (28-4) by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), confirming an earlier decision that European Union’s (EU) existing sugar subsidies break WTO rules. The European Commission has already accepted the decision, which is important, because it will on June 22 publish detailed reforms and EU agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has responded: “I will take account of this verdict when I finalise the reform proposals”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AT least 12.3 million people are trapped in forced labour around the world, says the International Labour Organisation (ILO), with the overwhelming majority being in Asia. A new report said 9.5 million forced labourers were in Asia; 1.3 million in Latin America and the Caribbean; 660,000 in sub-Saharan Africa; 260,000 in the Middle East and North Africa; 360,000 in industrialised countries; and 210,000 in ‘transition’ countries, for instance in eastern Europe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CARIBBEAN’S leading oil and gas producer Trinidad & Tobago says that an oil fund facility established for neighbouring small states is growing at US$4.1 million monthly. The money is transferred from the country’s oil revenues and is earmarked to help its Caribbean customers fight poverty while petroleum prices remain high.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) advocate general has recommended the abolition of a European Union (EU) rule insisting that feed manufacturers disclose on demand to their customers their exact ingredient formulae. Antonio Tizzano said that this element of directive 2002/2/EC on compound feeding-stuffs would cause “serious prejudice” to manufacturers’ businesses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DIVISIONS over the EU sugar regime reforms have been clarified at a European Union (EU) Council of Ministers (agriculture) meeting. British, Danish, German, Swedish, Latvian and Maltese delegations wanted “rapid reform, to make the sector more competitive”, though concerns of ex-European colonies in the African Pacific Caribbean (ACP) bloc “should be taken into account”.…