Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is playing its part in the debate over whether companies should be given additional duties for promoting health and safety and a clean environment, by publishing a green paper on Promoting a European Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTENATIONAL organisation committed to developing a workable fusion reactor has formally decided to move ahead with the next stage of its plan to develop the first fusion device to produce thermal energy at the level of a commercial power station.…

Keith Nuthall
THE CREATION of a European Aviation Safety Agency has moved closer following a “broad preliminary agreement” by EU transport ministers on common rules for civil aviation safety between the EU’s 15 Member States. The European Commission has been given 12 months to draw up “adequate proposals” on how the proposed regulation could be applied to third country aircraft.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MULTILATERAL sea and river organisations are usually created to deal with existing problems that cross national borders, but a new body has been making progress on a shipping issue that has yet even to happen: the exploitation and transport of subterranean solid mineral deposits.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FORMAL disputes proceedings at the World Trade Organisation between Chile and Peru over a new Peruvian tax regime for cigarettes have been shelved, following the striking down of the tax by the Constitutional Court of Peru.

In a ruling with no appeal, Peruvian judges backed an application by the British American Tobacco Co, which claimed that the tax “granted preferential treatment to a category of cigarettes.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN OPTIMISTIC long-term view of oil company prospects is found in the latest World Commodity Survey, from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, (UNCTAD).

It has suggested that oil production will surge in the next two decades and also that petroleum companies will take advantage of new technology to establish a commanding presence in renewable energy sectors.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
A TOUGHER new attitude to take-off and landing slots at European Union airports is on the way, under a new proposed Regulation from the European Commission that was issued in June this year.

Airlines will no longer be able to regard their slots as a property right but rather, as permission to use airport facilities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A CALL has been made at a meeting of the parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, for developing countries to be given less time to phase out the CFC substitute HCFC’s, which also damages patches of the gas in the high atmosphere.…

BY KATE REW
CHEMICAL window cleaning agents could soon be redundant thanks to a new product soon to be introduced by Pilkington North America. Its Pilkington Aktiv glass is the first in the world to have self-cleaning properties.

The glass uses a so-called ‘photocatalytic effect,’ where the sun’s rays gradually and continuously break down organic dirt which then dissolves.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE DISMANTLING of the Indonesian price regulator APKINDO and short-termist over-production in the south east Asian country has been blamed by the United Nations as the source of continual instability in world markets for this key timber product. Since the abolition of the organisation, said the new 2000-2001 World Commodity Survey from the UN Conference on Trade and Development, (UNCTAD), “the plywood market has witnessed extremely volatile prices.”…