Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY ALAN OSBORN, in Westminster
THE THIRD annual Information Security Solutions Europe conference has opened at the QE2 centre in London against a background of heightened tensions in the Internet community arising from the terror attacks on the US and a recent world-wide decline in investment in B2B activities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DEVELOPING countries have banded together at the World Trade Organisation to call for its Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs) to be interpreted as allowing their governments to take any steps “to protect public health,” including the authorisation of generic production of medicines under patent.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is preparing a new EU corporate take-over directive by setting up a high level group of company law experts and asking for preliminary recommendations by the end of the year. Brussels will propose a new directive to replace legislation that was scrapped in July when the European Parliament failed to approve it.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN bed linen manufacturers have been given six months to request the imposition of renewed anti-dumping duties on cut-priced imports from India, after the European Commission complied with a WTO ruling on the protection and suspended existing tariffs. Geneva had claimed that Brussels had wrongly calculated the duties and EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy has now ruled that there is currently insufficient information on which to base a fresh assessment leading to an immediate re-imposition of the duties.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RESEARCHERS have been asked to bid for a contract to write the European Commission a ground-breaking report on environmental crime in the EU, that would try and establish firm statistics on its extent and seriousness. Its conclusions could be used by Brussels to draw up new EU action programmes and laws on eco-crime.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN Union ministers have been asked to approve a wine trade deal struck between the European Commission and Croatia. If it is accepted, it will lead to the mutual liberalisation of import and export quotas, the lowering of tariffs and the joint recognition of protected names, such as geographic indications.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN Union ministers have been asked to approve another Balkans wine trade deal struck between the European Commission and, this time, Macedonia. If it is accepted, it will – as with the recent deal with Croatia – lead to the mutual liberalisation of import and export quotas, the lowering of tariffs and the joint recognition of protected names, such as geographic indications.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development is to lend Viking River Cruises US$15 million to acquire three cruise ships to ply the Danube and Volga rivers. The Scandinavian/Dutch owned company is the world’s largest river cruise line with a fleet of 30 ships operating in European and Russian waterways.…

Keith Nuthall
MEXICO, Bolivia and Malta have joined the string of World Trade Organisation member governments which have announced how they will implement the third stage of liberalisation commitments under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE CANADIAN book sector has seen its share of turbulence in the past 12 months. Last summer Larry Stevenson, a young, successful businessman at the helm of Chapters, the country’s largest book retailer, was pondering ways in which to expand the company further.…