Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

Keith Nuthall
ITALY has announced that it is to join a growing band of European Union countries that want to grant special national aid for the distillation of excess wine stocks, in the teeth of opposition from the European Commission. It wants Member States to abide by the new common market organisation, which was designed to limit such production subsidies.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation has formally decided to set up a new Sub-Committee on Aquaculture, serve as an intergovernmental forum for information exchange, discussion and consensus-building on emerging issues in fish farming. The FAO said that the sub-committee would provide guidance for governments and international bodies on technical and policy matters.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL action plan to fight forest fires is being drawn up with the assistance of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation. Experts from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ethiopia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Turkey and USA have been discussing proposals for a system involving mutual assistance and coordinated approaches to forest fire management.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank has created an anti-corruption department that will investigate allegations of fraud within the organisation’s staff or in projects it funds. The bank has recently appointed a director of the department, Maarten de Jong, a Dutchman, Managing Director of the European Institute for Law Enforcement Cooperation.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
EUROPE, in wine terms, has pedigree. It is, after all, the home of the longest established commercial wine-making tradition. But these days, its primacy is being challenged by colonial upstarts, in the shape of New World vineyards, and guess what; the new kids on the block seem to be ganging up on the oldsters.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE MEMBER States of the European Union reduced their emissions of the six key greenhouse gases by four per cent between 1990 and 1999, three per cent of which was achieved in 1998-9, according to a report from the European Environment Agency.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States and the European Union are poised for another battle of wits at the World Trade Organisation, over the rights of governments to protect their own audio-visual sectors, especially through the use of subsidies.

WTO members are about to examine in detail proposals made by the USA on the liberalisation of the international audio-visual sector, which it wants to promote through the ongoing WTO round on service industries.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
SLEEMAN Breweries of Canada has announced that it has signed a five-year deal with South African Breweries, which allows for Sleeman to sell, market and distribute SAB’s Pilsner Urquell brand in Canada.

The agreement could help pave the way for Sleeman breaking into the US market, as the Canadians have been allowed to sit in on talks SAB are currently having with potential US partners.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CANADA and the US have failed to solve the looming softwood lumber dispute at the Summit of the Americas, in Quebec City.

The US International Trade Commission will probably now hear claims by the American timber industry that Canada has flooded the US with cheap timber illegally and investigate how it contributed to the closure of 150 American lumber mills.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NICARAGUA, Guatemala and Costa Rica have joined formal consultations launched at the World Trade Organisation by Columbia with Chile, over safeguard duties imposed by the government in Santiago on sugar exports. Columbia has questioned whether the duties are justified by economic difficulties being suffered by the Chilean sugar sector.…