Search Results for: France

BY ROBERT STOKES

SWITZERLAND just signed a so-called ‘Rubik deal’ with Austria to safeguard Swiss banking secrecy in return for it levying withholding taxes anonymously on undeclared savings and investments held in Switzerland by Austrian nationals.

The bilateral treaty with Austria, start date 2013, follows those with Britain and Germany, and has raised the hackles of the European Commission, which has questioned these agreements’ legality under the European Union (EU) Savings Tax Directive, which tries to erase loopholes allowing depositors to squirrel money away from tax assessors.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

ALGAE have been heralded as the universal raw material of the future for biofuels, agricultural feed, nutritional supplements, biochemicals and cosmetics. They gobble up CO2, can clean up waste water, and many will thrive in seawater when the fresh variety is usually limited to the sunnier climes where algae can be grown more cheaply.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

ALGAE have been heralded as the universal raw material of the future for biofuels, agricultural feed, nutritional supplements, biochemicals and cosmetics. They gobble up CO2, can clean up waste water, and many will thrive in seawater when the fresh variety is usually limited to the sunnier climes where algae can be grown more cheaply.…

BY JAMES FULLER

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) executive, the European Commission is trying to defeat criticism of a multilateral treaty opposing counterfeiting through a high stakes legal manoeuvre, with officials saying the outcome is of critical importance to Europe’s powerful auto sector.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

WITH the global organic food market in a state of exponential growth, a new trade deal between the world’s two biggest organic food producers – the United States and the European Union (EU) – could significantly boost organic food and drink sales in both their markets, currently valued at more than USD50 billion annually combined.…

BY MEGAN DETRIE, IN CAIRO

A YEAR after the break out of the civil war in Libya which ousted Colonel Muammar Gaddafi from power – but paralysed the economy – the north African country’s airports are just now beginning to reopen, with construction projects likely to resume in the coming months.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

IT is easy to think of the European Union’s (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a more or less total rip-off when you read that a majority of the 27 member countries were asked to pay back some Euro EUR578 million of farm subsidies provided by the European Commission in 2010 (the last year for which figures are available) because of irregularities in spending, including lack of adequate control.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, IN BRUSSELS

‘CELEBRITY’ fragrances have become such a huge industry that even the Pope now has his own eau de cologne – according to Italian perfumer Silvana Casoli, (whose clients include Madonna and the King of Spain), this unique blend reflects the German pontiff’s love of Bavarian forests and their flora and fauna, creating an aura of "peace and tranquility".…

BY KARRYN MILLER

A STROLL through Myeong-dong, one of Seoul’s busiest shopping districts, gives a good idea of the magnitude of the popularity of South Korea’s cosmetics and skincare industry: according to the Korea Tourism Organisation there are approximately 1,000 cosmetic shops and hundreds of skincare stores within this small quadrant, alone.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

BILATERAL trade agreements between European Union (EU) and emerging economies have helped cushion EU plastics moulders and machinery suppliers as more important domestic markets have weakened in recession and the Eurozone crisis.

It is a two-way street: lower priced machinery from China and India has made inroads into EU markets for applications requiring less technologically sophisticated kit.…