Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has reacted swiftly to the Prestige oil spill disaster off Spain, asking ministers to immediately ban single-hull tankers aged 23 years and above from European Union (EU) waters, while blocking single-hull vessels of any age from carrying heavy fuel oil to the EU.…

Keith Nuthall
THE INTERNATIONAL Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has established its planned fund to help developing countries afford improvements to their air industry security, the International Financial Facility for Aviation Safety. Its budgets are ring-fenced and will be drawn upon to finance projects identified by ICAO’s Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WAY back when….last December….the International Maritime Organisation agreed a compulsory maritime security code for its member countries, covering ships and ports involved in international trade. Governments have to write the code into their laws by December 31 and shipping companies and port authorities are supposed to comply by June 2004.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Europe’s ambitious Galileo programme to establish a global satellite navigation system is clearly a project that likes to keep its supporters in a state of fairly constant nervous tension. At a cost of 3.2 billion euros, Galileo was never a sure-fire runner to begin with.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE AGREEMENT of a seventh amendment to the European Union’s directive 76/768/EEC on cosmetic products, which addresses the thorny issue of animal testing, brings to an end three years of debates on the current proposals, but actually is the result of a decade of often bitter discussion.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation (WTO) is approaching a key deadline in the agricultural section of its ongoing Doha Development Round. Its 146 member countries have until March 31 to complete a so-called ‘modalities’ agreement for the discussions. This should include binding targets for the talks on future tariff levels, import quota sizes, export subsidies and production grants.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
JAPAN has rejected an American government demand that it lower landing fees at its two major international airports as part of wider business deregulation, according to the Japanese Shipping & Trade News. It says that the demand was made at a meeting of government officials from the two countries on regulations and business competition.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
WE are not inclined to disagree with those who say the enlargement of the European Union from 15 to 25 countries in 2004 is to be done on terms much less damaging to present EU farmers, and conversely much less favourable to incoming farmers, than seemed probable a year ago.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has initiated formal talks – the first stage of disputes proceedings at the World Trade Organisation – over import restrictions imposed by the Indian government on a range or products including penicillin, its salts, and derivatives, rifampicin, streptomycins or their derivatives, and first aid boxes or kits.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
Flower importers will have to meet tougher requirements over health certification for certain species this year following amendments to the EU’s plant health regime agreed recently by the council of agriculture ministers.

The ministers amended the EU Directive 2000/29/EC, which deals with protective measures against the introduction and spread of organisms harmful to plants or plant products in the Union.…