Search Results for: Morocco

THE EUROPEAN Parliament has now formally approved a new European Union (EU) offshore oil and gas drilling directive, designed to prevent accidents such as the Deepwater Horizon spill happening in coastal EU sea waters.

These new rules will require oil and gas firms to prove they can cover potential liabilities from accidents and submit major hazard reports and emergency response plans to regulators before drilling operations start.…

may be a big concept, but the road to making personal care product packaging greener is made of small incremental steps that can both provide green marketing benefits and reduce costs.

Recent innovations include reducing the size of containers, while maintaining the volume of product they hold, alongside innovations in using renewable resources and keeping packaging waste out of landfills.…

SUSTAINABILITY may be a big concept, but the road to making personal care product packaging greener is made of small incremental steps that can both provide green marketing benefits and reduce costs.

Recent innovations include reducing the size of containers, while maintaining the volume of product they hold, alongside innovations in using renewable resources and keeping packaging waste out of landfills.…

A EUROPEAN Union (EU)-funded research project has been researching the pharmaceutical applications of active ingredients extracted from herbs and aromatic plants found in Morocco. The Euro EUR442,000 MAP2ERA project has been coordinated by Morocco’s Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University, working with the Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (ICSN) in France, Spain’s University of Alicante and Giraf PM, a German project management company.…

A PLANNED deepening of trade relations between the European Union (EU) and Morocco should streamline customs procedures for the EU clothing and textile industry, whether importing or exporting products from this key north African trading partner, the European Apparel and Textile Confederation (Euratex) has told just-style.com.…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) and Moroccan medicine manufacturing sector could prosper through a new trade agreement now being negotiated between the EU and Morocco. The EU imported just Euro EUR17 million’s worth of pharmaceuticals from Morocco in 2012, while Morocco imported EUR330 million’s worth of EU-made medicines that year.…

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) cosmetics sector could prosper by a new trade agreement now being negotiated between the EU and Morocco. The EU imported just USD30.6 million’s worth of cosmetics and perfumes from Morocco in 2011, while Morocco imported USD173.2 million’s worth of EU-made cosmetics and perfumes that year.…

THE MOROCCAN Society of Tobacco (formerly Imperial Tobacco Maroc) has welcomed the launch of negotiations between the European Union (EU) and Morocco to forge a so-called ‘deep and comprehensive free trade agreement’ (DCFTA) between them. The deal would remove trade regulations and harmonise industrial standards, noted Ghassan Khaber, communications and institutional relations manager at the north African country’s dominant tobacco manufacturer.…

By Kaci Racelma, in Tizi Ouzou, Algeria; and Paul Cochrane, in Beirut 

This article appeared last March (2012) in Commercial Crime International, a specialist title run by the International Chamber of Commerce. It foreshadowed the Islamist-related unrest and rebellion that actually occurred later in Mali and Algeria….

COMMERCIAL crime may not be as omnipresent in North Africa as in some other parts of the world, but companies operating in the region have risks to contend with. Corruption is rife, smuggling across the borders with Sub-Saharan countries is a major activity, and terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are in the ascendancy. Kaci Racelma and Paul Cochrane take a detailed look at these problems.

 “CORRUPTION is systemic in all of the Maghreb, and not likely to change,” said Dr Geoff Porter, a political risk and security consultant specialising in North Africa. “We’ll have to see what happens in Tunisia. It was a cesspool of corruption under the previous government and while the new one seems to have a zero tolerance policy to corruption, it has not been in power long enough to gauge its effectiveness,” said Dr Porter, founder of US-based North Africa Risk Consulting.…

THE ARAB Spring may have increased short-term doubts about the political stability of Europe’s southern and eastern Mediterranean neighbours, but the long-term case for energy cooperation between these regions is surely unarguable.

Europe needs more energy than it can generate, and it has (for the time being at least) money to buy energy from north Africa and the Levant.…