Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States and Mexico have headed off a poultry trade row. Under NAFTA, standard Mexican tariffs on US poultry exports were scrapped on January 1. However, Mexico feared an export boom and threatened to invoke its right to impose safeguard tariffs on all US chicken.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been laying preparations for possible fuel shortages associated with a possible war in the Middle East, summoning its special group on petroleum provisions to analyse existing European Union (EU) fuel stocks and supplies. The Commission wants every Member State to stockpile enough fuel to last for 40 days of standard consumption.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
WITH Australia sharing the front-line in President Bush’s war against terrorism with Britain and the USA, and also having witnessed its citizens dying in last year’s Bali nightclub terror attack, it is maybe not surprising that it has been tightening its money laundering legislation, especially as regards terrorists.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed wide-ranging reforms to the European Union’s (EU) anti-counterfeiting and piracy legislation, which would toughen national laws against this problem across the continent.

If it is accepted by the EU Council of Ministers, this proposed directive on intellectual property rights would require all Member States to allow injunctions halting the sale of counterfeit goods, precautionary seizures of suspected offenders’ bank accounts, give evidence-gathering powers to judicial authorities and force offenders to pay damages to right holders to compensate for lost income.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has thrown doubt on the legality of national food quality marks within the European Union (EU), through a judgement ruling that a ‘Markenqualität aus deutschen Landen’ (quality label for produce made in Germany) scheme breaks EU freedom of trade rules by excluding products made out of its home country.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE UNITED States says it is offering duty reductions for all agricultural imports from Americas trading partners to create a proposed 34-nation New Word trading bloc. While meat products were not mentioned specifically in its initial Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) offer, the US says it would be prepared to admit at least 56 per cent of agricultural imports from all these countries duty-free by 2005.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has ordered Spain and Italy to cease banning the marketing of British, Danish and Irish chocolate containing vegetable fat as ‘chocolate,’ ruling that by insisting they are sold as ‘chocolate substitutes’ the two countries are illegally restricting EU trade.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
US Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick has backed launching a case against the European Union for refusing to accept genetically modified food. Such a suit would seek to overturn Brussels’ de facto four year-old moratorium on GM food imports.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission and the Algerian government are to cooperate to ensure that sub-standard shipping does not ply the seaways of the Mediterranean, notably through the phasing out of old single hull tankers.

European Union (EU) transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio and Algeria’s transport minister Abdelmalek Sellal agreed at a meeting in Algiers that a joint group of experts should draw up a cooperation programme on improving maritime safety.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has asked European Union (EU) ministers to give it the authority to block future trans-Atlantic deals involving American and EU airlines by ensuring that special open-skies deals negotiated between a Member State and the USA are officially banned.…