Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY ALAN OSBORN
WILL the creation of a European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to serve all 15 EU countries help the cause of food safety in Britain? Some say that our own history of food safety has not been inspiring in recent years and in a number of areas lags behind that of our European partners.…

BY MARK ROWE
SINGAPORE, said to be the world’s most expensive place to buy a car, has scrapped legal requirements for would-be buyers to hand over a 30 per cent down payment on purchases. Instead of having to pay up-front fees of at least US$11,000, in future they will be able to pay for the whole car on credit.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has adopted a resolution that “deplores” the American refusal to strike a deal at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks on licensing generic drugs in developing countries facing health crises. MEP’s criticised the USA for “favouring a unilateral solution and a narrow list of medicines for which WTO intellectual property rules would be waived.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AFTER four years of negotiation a binding international tobacco control treaty has been agreed by the 171 member states of the World Health Organisation. The final, and acrimonious, round of talks on a text for the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) ended on February 28.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank is developing a Regional Integration Assistance Strategy to remove obstacles to trade within six central African countries that would particularly promote commerce in the area’s rich metal reserves. Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon would benefit from five years of support, leading to road construction and improvement, the modernisation and integration of the financial sector, and by speeding ports and customs transactions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CHAIRMAN of the World Trade Organisation’s agriculture talks has proposed binding liberalisation targets for member governments. In his first draft of a ‘modalities’ agreement that would set these goals, Stuart Harbinson, of Hong Kong, has suggested, for instance, that all agricultural tariffs greater than 90 per cent should be cut by an average of 60 per cent, with a minimum cut of 45 per cent per tariff line.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is preparing to negotiate away any legal or bureaucratic barriers that might prevent non-European Union foreign nationals from establishing travel agencies in any EU Member State. The stance has been taken in its draft offer to the ongoing World Trade Organisation talks on the liberalisation of the world’s trade in services.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ESTABLISHMENT of special anti-fraud coordinators in all eastern and southern European countries applying to join the European Union (EU) has been welcomed by OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud office.

In a memorandum on the fight against fraud in an enlarged EU, OLAF said: “By putting Anti Fraud Co-ordinating Service offices in place, the candidate countries have demonstrated in concrete terms their commitment to fighting fraud.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TWO international organisations have highlighted opportunities for European water companies, which may be called upon in the next few decades to boost supplies to arid parts of the world, notably the Middle East.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) World Water Development Report says this region is the poorest in terms of water availability, with Kuwait being the most parched (10 m³ is available per person annually), followed by Gaza Strip (52 m³), the United Arab Emirates (58 m³), Bahamas (66 m³), Qatar (94 m³), Maldives (103 m³), Libya (113 m³), Saudi Arabia (118 m³), and Malta (129 m³).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FARMING may be becoming increasingly high-tech, but somehow, it still seems rather odd to couple digging potatoes with launching shiny satellites into orbit around the Earth. But, in fact – as many British farmers well know – space technology has offered useful services to agriculture and will increasingly do so in the future.…