Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW body to drive forward the development of fuel cell technology in Britain has been launched. The Department of Trade and Industry said “Fuel Cells UK” would help the emerging UK sector by promoting the fuel cell industry and by acting as a central contact point for industry and the research community.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
GERMANY has been preventing a collective acceptance by the 15 EU countries on the United Nations Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. As in the negotiations at the World Health Organisation over the convention, at EU Council of Ministers meetings Germany has stood out, (mirroring the US position), against key aspects of the text, notably the ban on tobacco advertising.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
BRITAIN heads the European Union league for productivity in computer and related services, with an added value output per person employed in the sector of Euro 37,000 (about Pounds 24,300) compared to the average for the 15 member countries of Euro 32,000.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CREATION of an “audit culture” in the public administrations of the 10 eastern and southern European countries planning to join the European Union next May would help ease growing concerns in Brussels that would-be Member States are failing to meet EU financial probity standards, MEPs have heard.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A new scheme to computerise the system under which tobacco and other excise goods is moved between traders in the EU in bond under duty-suspension arrangements will end tax evasion which the European Commission says can’t be controlled under the present “cumbersome” paper-based system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRAZIL has extended its safeguard duty regime against imports of shelled and shredded dried coconuts, imposing it on Malaysian exports. The south-east Asian country had previously been exempt, along with 87 other developing countries said a note to the World Trade Organisation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DUTY-FREE shop sales of confectionary rose last year by 6.5 per cent, despite some catastrophic hits being taken by a world travel industry still reeling from September 11. “Confectionery has been one of the fastest-growing categories in travel retail in recent years,” said a paper by market analysts the Moodie Report.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WORLD food standards organisation Codex Alimentarius has asked governments to comment on draft health guidelines on additives and contaminants by September 30, including draft maximum levels for lead in fish, tin in canned food, plus cadmium levels in rice, soy beans, mollusks and peanuts.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
GERMANY has been preventing a collective acceptance by the 15 EU countries on the United Nations Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. As in the negotiations at the World Health Organisation over the convention, at EU Council of Ministers meetings Germany has stood out, (mirroring the US position), against key aspects of the text, notably the ban on tobacco advertising.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has offered to enshrine in international law, the right of non-European Union retailers to enjoy the same rights to set up supermarkets, hypermarkets and departments stores across Europe, as local retail companies.

Its offer comes in the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, where negotiations on services are the most advanced of all its talks on liberalising global commerce.…