Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A PANEL of company law specialists has made recommendations to the European Commission about a possible future EU takeover directive, which Brussels is to propose this Spring. The revamped legislation will draw on their ideas and follows the rejection by the European Parliament of a six-year-old takeovers proposal last summer.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission today (Tuesday) formally proposed that the European Union ratifies the Rotterdam Convention procedure regulating the shipping of hazardous chemicals in international trade, and at the same time proposed that the EU goes further by covering a wider range of chemicals than contained in the Convention.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
INDIA is planning to open an international airport serving Buddhist pilgrims visiting the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment, in the undeveloped state of Bihar, which would receive flights from around the world, unrestricted by bilateral agreements.

New Delhi and the Bihar state government have identified land for the development, between the religious site of Buddha Gaya and nearby Gaya town.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
Companies worried about the threat to the continuity of their

business posed by a disaster like the World Trade Centre attack can insure

against it. To nobody’s surprise the practice has soared in popularity

since September 11th. Mr Chris Rigby Smith, head of business continuity at

Marsh UK, told delegates at this week’s contingency planning and disaster

recovery conference in London that business interruption insurance (BII)

differed from business crisis management (BCM) but they were linked.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Labour Organisation has estimated that the aviation and associated industries have shed 400,000 jobs worldwide since September 11, because of the terrorist attacks themselves and ongoing global economic slump that they worsened. Jobs have been lost in airports, airlines, air navigation services, equipment manufacturers, catering companies and car rental facilities, said the ILO.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has launched the first stage of disputes proceedings at the World Trade Organisation over provisional safeguard duties imposed by the Philippines government on imports of glazed and unglazed ceramic wall and floor tiles. The European Commission has called for formal talks on the matter with the Filipino government; if these fail, then Brussels could ask a WTO panel to arbitrate on the matter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GLOBAL cosmetics company Aveda is to give US$500,000 to an eco-tourism project involving the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organisation. Sites benefiting are Sian Ka’an and El Vizcaino biosphere reserves, Mexico; Tikal national park, Guatemala; Rio Platano biosphere reserve, Honduras; and Komodo and Ujung Kulon national parks Indonesia.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SIGNIFICANT trend towards the consolidation in the European Union’s insurance sector has been highlighted by a report from the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat, which has released detailed data about 1999.

In that year, said the study, the number of EU insurance businesses decreased by 8.4 per cent between 1996 and 1999, with a particularly sharp decline in Britain, where numbers fell by 23.7 per cent.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
WHAT is the region with the highest port consumption in the world? A fair assumption would be Portugal or maybe England, but actually, it is the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec.

Port sales in the Canadian province have exploded from 276,000 750 ml bottles in 1995, to an estimated 3 million this year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
The European Commission is now re-thinking its strategy over ship-building following rejection of its favoured approach by the EU Council of Industry Ministers on Wednesday.

Mr Heinz Mico, a spokesman for the trade commissioner Pascal Lamy, said the extension of the EU’s case at the WTO to include LNG carriers would only be realistic if there were “good reasons” for it that went beyond the complaint of one country.…