Search Results for: Switzerland

Keith Nuthall
AS the European Union (EU) prepares to abolish its remaining restrictive import quotas for textile and clothing products, the latest European Commission statistics confirm that China is best placed to exploit this liberalisation. For 2003, China exported more textile products to the expanded EU, with 10.7% of imports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SWITZERLAND has released a paper outlining where the world’s drinks producing countries agree over the long-running debate World Trade Organisation debate on creating an international register of protected terms for wines and spirits. It includes an acceptance that terms that have become generic should be unprotected, that member countries can decide how geographical indications should be protected within their own systems and that a register should “facilitate” protection.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ADVOCATE General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has struck another blow against the European Commission’s bid to block the drinks packaging merger between Switzerland’s Tetra Laval group, (a leader in carton production), and French company Sidel, which designs and manufactures plastic bottles.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations has unveiled a three-member panel charged with investigating allegations of substantial corruption within its now defunct Oil for Food Programme, under which Iraq’s deposed Baathist regime sold limited supplies of crude, supposedly to fund humanitarian supplies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have been asked to waive anti-dumping duties imposed on imports from Russia of (with silicon content less than 99.99 per cent by weight) for three cooperating exporters, owned by the SUAL Holding Group. Its SKU LLC, of Sual-Kremny-Ural, and ZAO KREMNY, Irkutsk, have formally promised to maintain their silicon prices at a level that is acceptable to the European Commission, which has as a result proposed that they be exempted from the duties; the decision would also apply to their related trader ASMP GmbH, of Switzerland.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
PERSONNEL managers may well consider the European Court of Justice (ECJ) a somewhat austere body, constantly engaged in arcane institutional and corporate matters. Think again. It can well be argued that the ECJ has had a more direct impact on the lives and work of the European Union’s 380 million citizens, including of course those in Britain, than any other single organisation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NOBODY likes to be on a blacklist, especially one written by the American government. But every year, the US state department issues a comprehensive rogues gallery of countries involved in the narcotics trade and related criminal problems. One surprising entrant: the United States.…

Keith Nuthall
THE ORGANISATION for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has claimed it is making headway in chasing so-called “harmful” tax regimes from the world’s statute books, claiming 18 have been scrapped since the year 2000 and another 14 have been reformed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MONACO is all about money. A glamorous speck of high-rises looming above the French Riviera, it is famous for wealthy glamour, tax exiles, racing-cars and gambling. Given this cocktail, it is hardly surprising that this, Europe’s second smallest country by geography, has attracted allegations that it has been the site of money laundering.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission will spend over Euro 2.2 million in three years promoting EU wine. Euro 1.22 million is shared by the Union interprofessionelle des Vins du Beaujolais and Deutsches Weininstitut pushing wine in Japan and Euro 440,000 goes to Portugal’s Commissao de Viticultura a Regiao dos Vinhos Verdes for USA, Canada and Switzerland campaigns, for instance.…