Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY MARK ROWE
IT may have taken riots in Seattle and Genoa but the World Trade Organisation has finally come out all compassionate. The theory is simple. Most of the world’s poor are in developing nations. Many of those in greatest poverty are farmers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FOR years, the US government has played Mary Poppins on agricultural subsidies, claiming that its handouts do not encourage farmers to overproduce when prices are low. Now it is not really trying to pretend.

The mask has not just slipped, it has been casually pulled off and tossed aside.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A MOVE towards radical changes in marine insurance practices have been signalled by a policy statement from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, (OECD), on ways of eliminating sub-standard shipping throughout the world.

The OECD, which represents the 30 leading western industrial countries, has set out a number of principles to be developed into precise recommendations which, among other things, are aimed at “reducing the unintended effects of insurance policies that allow unfettered coverage of sub-standard ships.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME sensible words were spoken recently by the EU’s agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler on the way forward for farmers. His starting point was the quality of farm produce. Noone is going to say that quality has ever been far from farmers’ minds, but until recently it wasn’t really the first consideration.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CLOTHING imports from the United States are to bear the brunt of retaliatory tariffs imposed by the European Union because of the erection of controversial ‘safeguard’ duties by Washington to protect the American steel industry.

The European Commission has announced that it is asking EU ministers to approve a selected range of products, where the levying of duty will cause the most pain to US exporters, in a bid to force the Bush administration to drop its steel tariffs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CRIMINALS dream of a world without police and although such a concept might seem science-fiction, it is actually easy to commit offences away from the eyes of law enforcement: just hire a boat. On the high seas, there is no-one watching, which is why fishing crime is so common and difficult to detect.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has lost a legal bid to suppress the payment of state aid by the French government to a cooperative agency that handles small-scale exports of French language books. The European Court of Justice ruled that the Commission had failed to understand that the subsidies did not help the Centre d’Exportation du Livre Français compete in the general book trade.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission is to seek authorisation from European Union member governments to negotiate the formal accession of the EU to the International Maritime Organisation. Brussels said that in spite of the EU’s economic strength and the independent political power of its institutions, it carried little weight in the adoption of essential international safety rules in the sea transport sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NATURAL gas exploration companies working in the inhospitable Snøhvit field, off the far north coast of Norway, should be granted tax privileges, following acceptance of a scheme by the Surveillance Authority of the European Free Trade Area. Gas will be landed onshore via pipeline, cooled, then liquefied for ship transportation to international markets.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has ruled that a Spanish clothing, footwear and headgear company should have secured European trade mark rights to the word ‘Ellos,’ regarding a mail order service, though it should not use the brand-name for their products.…