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21 December 1998
BRIDGES Weekly Trade News Digest will be taking a break over the Christmas and new year period, to coincide with the slower schedule of international trade and sustainable development-related meetings and news at this time of year. The next issue of BRIDGES Weekly Trade News Digest will mark the...
21 December 1998
Last week proved perhaps the most complicated week yet in the banana dispute between the EU and U.S. It seemed early last week that the EU would extend an olive branch to the U.S. and call for a speedy review of its proposed banana import regime to the U.S. - in an effort to settle the two sides'...
21 December 1998
The WTO Special Session of General Council last week convened again in an informal intersessional meeting as part of the first phase of lead-up to the Third Ministerial, scheduled for November-December 1999 in the U.S. The topic of this third, informal session were the Recommendations on the follow...
21 December 1998
The French Council of State December 11 said it could not rule in the case brought by the environmental organisation Greenpeace and farm groups against the French government's February 1998 decision to allow Novartis' Bt maize to be grown on approximately 30,000 hectares in France, referring the...
21 December 1998
Southeast Asian leaders last week met in Hanoi for the sixth Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, where they adopted a "Statement of Bold Measures" designed to foster investor confidence and speed economic recovery in beleaguered ASEAN countries. ASEAN members agreed to an...
21 December 1998
Jamaica's Ambassador to the U.S. Richard Bernal last week called for flexibility in negotiating the hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would link 34 economies from the Yukon to Patagonia by 2005. Mr. Bernal chairs the FTAA negotiating committee on small economies designed to...
21 December 1998
The WTO last week conducted the obligatory "Trade Policy Review" of Canada. While Members found that Canada is a generally open economy, they noted that Canada has work to do with respect to market access for developing countries. WTO members noted that Canada still has in place significant tariff...
21 December 1998
Canada said it would continue to push for greater civil society participation in the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum in 1999, despite rejection of a proposal for broader public participation at the APEC summit last month. Writing in the FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW this month, Canada...
21 December 1998
A report by the wildlife-trade monitoring programme of the WWF/IUCN found that illegal trade in endangered wildlife remains high in former Soviet states since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. A number of threatened species such as snow leopard and Tien Shan brown bear and wild sheep are poached...
21 December 1998
WTO negotiators last week again failed to meet a self-imposed deadline December 11 for reaching agreement on tariff cuts for information technology products, in a deal that would broaden the 1997 WTO Information Technology Agreement. Talks began in February 1998 and were to be concluded by June...
21 December 1998
• EVENTS WTO Meetings 20-21 January 1999: Trade Policy Review Body (Argentina). For information, contact Lucie Giraud, WTO, tel: (41-22) 739 50 75. 25 January 1999: Dispute Settlement Body meeting. For information, contact Nuch Nazeer, WTO, tel: (41-22) 739 53 93. 25 January 1999: Committee on...
14 December 1998
Meeting for its last session of 1998 last week, the WTO General Council had a busy agenda. Items of interest to BRIDGES readers included the High-Level Symposia on Trade and Environment and on Trade and Development, the review of the 1996 document derestriction decision, the appointment of the new...
14 December 1998
The EU this week is expected to extend an olive branch to the U.S. in an effort to settle the two sides' dispute over whether the EU has gone far enough in its revised banana import regime to comply with the spirit of a 1997 WTO Panel ruling. The proposal could revive EU-U.S. banana talks, which...
14 December 1998
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) December 3 announced, "Negotiations on the MAI are no longer taking place," officially ending three years of frustrating negotiations toward a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). The end to ailing negotiations was...
14 December 1998
The WTO General Council last week agreed to the request submitted to it by the Dispute Settlement Body, to prolong the review of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) until mid-1999. According to the provisions of the DSU, the review should have been concluded by the end of this year, but the...
14 December 1998
An EU ban on the use of four antibiotics used in animal feed moved forward last week as the proposal won approval from ten out of 15 ministers to the European Commission (EC). (See BRIDGES Weekly Trade News Digest Vol. 2, No. 44, November 16, 1998.) EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler...
14 December 1998
Officials from the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR, comprising Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and associate members Bolivia and Chile) met last week for their semi-annual summit. The meeting yielded agreements on two sectors, sugar and autos, which have been the source of much internal...
14 December 1998
The World Bank has delayed - pending further consultation with non-governmental and other interested organisations, a plan to control the US$150 billion annual global carbon trading market. The World Bank plan details a scheme in which the Bank would charge five per cent commission on all pollution...