Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has speeded up its establishment of a European Maritime Safety Agency, which has been delayed because of disagreements within the EU Council of Ministers over the seat of its secretariat. As a result, the Commission has convened the inaugural meeting of the agency’s administrative board in its own Brussels offices, without waiting for a decision on where the organisation will be houses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union and its allies at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) negotiations over the creation of a global register for protected geographical indications in the wine and spirit trade have made a significant concession, which may be the basis for a future deal.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT’S now official. Following agreement this week by its environment ministers, the European Union (EU) is to set up a market to trade pollution permits for carbon dioxide (CO2), the main so-called greenhouse gas, starting in 2005.

The European Commission is delighted, business is pleased, and while not all environmentalists are overjoyed, the balance of opinion among them is clearly favourable.…

KEITH NUTHALL
CANADA has joined formal World Trade Organisation (WTO) disputes talks initiated by Brazil against the United States regarding American government subsidies to producers, users and exporters of upland cotton. The Brazilians claim that these payments break the WTO’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, Agreement on Agriculture, and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SUCCESSFUL negotiations between the European Commission and the governments of Cambodia and Nepal have led to a deal over the extension of existing textile trade agreements between these Asian kingdoms and the European Union (EU). The Commission has asked European ministers to formally agree that these agreements should be prolonged until December 2004, appending a new list of textile products that can be imported into the EU without any quota limits.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
SIMPLIFIED rules for ensuring that clean bathing water set out in the final proposal for a revised European Union (EU) bathing water directive will need to stand up to cost benefit analysis, water utility representatives have stressed.

The European Commission has now tabled proposed revision for agreement by EU ministers and MEPs, after years of argument that stalled previous attempts to update the 1976 directive.…

Keith Nuthall
THE INTERNATIONAL Air Transport Association and the US’s Federal Aviation Administration are launching a CD-rom designed to train and raise the awareness of pilots and air traffic controllers in reducing the risk of runway incursions by taxiing aircraft.

Delegates at a recent International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) conference on the topic in Mexico City heard that this Runway Safety Education and Training Aid was necessary because – said one speaker – “in recent years the number of runway incursions has increased significantly worldwide,” and stands to increase further as civil aviation grows.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
PEPSI Co India Holdings is reorganising its management structure, basing it on five regionally based markets: north, east, west, south and central. Said a Pepsi official: “The organisation structure in the market units is being reconfigured to reflect geographic continuity and tap new market opportunities.”…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA and KEITH NUTHALL
THE GOVERNMENT of Sri Lanka is embarking on a comprehensive survey of the country’s clay resources as demand grows thanks to an official policy of promoting a home-grown ceramics industry, which is already the largest mineral-based sector in this south Asian country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank has followed up an agreement to integrate Balkans countries’ electrical systems with that of the European Union by announcing a Euro 130 million loan for developing the region’s electricity networks.

Euro 70 million is being lent to the Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro, (Euro 59 and 11 million respectively).…