The Paris-based OECD says the emergent developing countries, especially China, are set to eclipse its membership of most advanced economies, in playing the lead as global wealth producers. … Read More »
The Greenpeace organisation says it is satisfied the European Union will now crack down effectively on illegal imports of rainforest timber. … Read More »
An arm-wrestle between the European Parliament and the Council made up of Agriculture Ministers, over control of products from rainforest logging, has gone into a second year. … Read More »
Pressure on government borrowing, especially since the stimulus spending and bank bailouts last year in the financial crisis, has been qualified by more growth-orientated, yet cautious talk out of Brussels.
The French government wants to write it into the Constitution, that budgets have to be kept in surplus, and the newspaper Le Monde says it is also planning a move to extend the pension age. … Read More »
Sales of uranium to Russia, agriculture, education, protecting Antarctica, and even the ban on kangaroo meat were discussed when the Australian Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, visited Moscow this week (21 and 22.4.10).
He went on to Tallinin, in Estonia, for a NATO meeting on Afghanistan. … Read More »
COMMENTARY: That bugbear of Australian - EU relations over decades, the Common Agricultural Policy, won’t go down – Europeans’ devotion to protected agriculture making itself felt in two recent developments.
The European Commission is chasing up certain national governments for defying new laws against excessive feather-bedding on the farm; and at the same time the EU’s often-named fourth institution, the European Economic and Social Committee, has made a nostalgic attack on the evils of the “market” in agriculture. … Read More »