Search Results for: Switzerland

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has approved a third revision of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Pharma-GATT Agreement, removing import duties on 1,290 more pharmaceuticals and medicine ingredients traded between major manufacturing countries.

This agreement was originally framed in 1994, and has been updated twice to account for technical progress and expand its scope.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
UNIVERSITIES and colleges that promote the usefulness of global standards in research, business and public administration will be honoured this summer in new award launched by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). Nominations for entries have now closed and winners of the Swiss Francs 15,000 (GBPounds 6,143) ISO Award for Higher Education in Standardisation will be will be announced in September 2007, at the ISO general assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is catching up with the United States in innovation, a European Commission-financed statistical report has claimed, although the US still has many significant advantages. This year’s European Innovation Scoreboard (2006) concludes: “The innovation gap between the EU [minus new members Bulgaria and Romania] and Japan, and in particular with the US is decreasing.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN today’s highly competitive energy sector, oil and gas companies and their suppliers are always looking for an edge over rivals, especially in technology. So it can only be good news that the European Union (EU) will from this year until 2013 be spending Euro 2.3 billion on energy studies through its ‘seventh framework programme’, its largest ever research spending scheme, commanding budgets worth Euro 53.2 billion in total.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared the acquisition from ICI of Dutch-registered flavourings and fragrances manufacturer Quest International by Switzerland-based Givaudan, which operates in the same sector.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AN odd fact about Serbia today is that hardly anybody in the country seems curious about the way its official government financial figures don’t remotely add up. The authors of a US-sponsored report for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) published last October – ‘Money Laundering and Predicate Crime in Serbia 2000-2005’ – acknowledge the conventional shortages of staff and computers but say they “hit on a more fundamental void: lack of curiosity.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IMPORT duties on tobacco products shipped from the Lebanon to the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) countries have become duty free under a wide-ranging commercial agreement, which came into force on January 1. The EFTA-Lebanon Free Trade Agreement will also see Lebanese duties being cut from 2008, to be abolished entirely by 2015.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is pushing signatories to its new Protocol on Water and Health to its Convention on Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes to agree detailed targets on improving European water quality.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has warned of a boom in counterfeits of food and drink products entering the European Union, with more than 5 million fake items seized by customs officials last year. This is 118% compared with the numbers of seizures in 2004 – the first time the food/drink category has exceeded 5 million.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WITH global trade ever increasing, and the power of brands to generate massive profits made starkly clear with every company report, the counterfeiting of goods is one of international organised crime’s major boom areas. The European Commission has been researching the threat posed from around the world.…