Search Results for: International law

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission wants to help the European Union’s (EU) textile industry increase its reliance on added-value high-end products to prepare for the oncoming liberalisation of the world’s textile trade in 2005.

With the scrapping of import quota controls through the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Agreement on Textiles and Clothing opening the gates to cheap textile imports from developing countries, a new Commission Communication (policy paper) called for increased research and development in the sector.…

BY MARK ROWE and KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is piling pressure on the 10 eastern and southern European countries joining the organisation next May to abolish tax laws that currently break EU regulations and directives. The EU Council of Ministers has drawn up a list of 30 tax measures deemed “harmful” to Europe’s internal market that apply in the countries planning to join the EU next year, namely Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SHIPBREAKING, a ready source of scrap steel, is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. What is more, agreed a recent meeting of experts from the International Metalworkers Federation, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and others, it need not be so deadly.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE CANADIAN Grand Prix in Montreal has been provisionally reinstated into next year’s Formula 1 season, pending the raising of financial compensation for teams losing revenue because of Canada’s tobacco advertising ban. The race had been axed from the Formula One 2004 calendar because of the law, which prohibits tobacco firms from sponsoring sports events.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GERMANY Sweden and Denmark must do more to prevent nutrient-rich water run-off from their rivers and coasts killing thousands of fish in the western Baltic Sea, said an international research project. The official Baltic Sea international environmental watchdog The Helsinki Commission – tasked with investigating mass deaths of fish in the region in 2002 – has concluded that higher levels of nutrients from agriculture, urban wastewater and air pollution poured into the sea after heavy rain and snow the previous winter, creating algal blloms that starved the lower levels of the western Baltic of oxygen over the summer and autumn of last year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has warned that fraudsters are deceiving the customers of Channel Island banks into providing personal banking information by intercepting correspondence and inserting doctored tax collection forms. These counterfeit Form R105’s are based on legitimate British Inland Revenue forms, but solicit more details then the originals and have – of course – a fake return address.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE LATEST International Cocoa Agreement (of 2001) has entered into force – two years after its agreement – sweeping away production quotas, buffer stock rules and other price controls imposed by its five predecessors. Instead, it aims to create more sustainability in a sector where prices have been low, creating a consultative board on the issue.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTERNATIONAL Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed El Baradei called for the systematic distribution of nuclear energy systems using materials that cannot be used to create nuclear weapons. Writing in the Economist, he said systems should prevent countries diverting materials to weapons production and “prevent the misuse of facilities and equipment for the clandestine manufacture of (weapons) materials; and facilitate efficient oversight.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has formally threatened Sweden with legal action at the European Court of Justice over a ban on its residents ordering private deliveries of alcohol via independent import delivery services. Under Swedish law, private individuals can, under certain conditions, bring alcohol into Sweden for their own use, if they do so personally.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank is lending US$12 million to Croatia, (to be combined with US$27.8 million from private lenders), to create a national market in energy efficiency. The money would fund the creation of an energy service company within Hrvatska Elektroprivreda (HEP, the national power utility), which would develop, finance and implement energy efficiency projects on a commercial basis, many of which would be put in place by local contractors.…