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  • Feb. 14, 2006

    GMO’s, WTO and the EU

    Over the past week, I have been amazed, and occasionally horrified, by the media and civil society response to the EC - Biotech Products dispute currently pending before a WTO dispute settlement panel in Geneva. In this dispute about trade in GMOs between the US, Canada and Argentina (complainants) and the EC (respondent), the WTO Panel sent its preliminary conclusions to the parties on 6 February 2006. The conclusions reached by the Panel in the EC - Biotech Products dispute will not alter the system or framework within which the EU takes decisions on GMOs'. Articles, reports and statements suggesting the contrary are mistaken and were definitely much ado about little.

  • Jan. 30, 2006

    Regional wages: a solution to the lack of regional mobility

    Regional disparities among EU countries remain substantial. In the second half of the nineties, the coefficient of variation of income per capita across 50 regions in the EU was almost double than across the 49 states of the continental US. Policy makers will then need to make a clear choice, in favour of greater labour mobility or higher wage flexibility. Otherwise, the combination of wage rigidity and limited labour mobility will continue to lead to unacceptably high unemployment differentials among regions.

  • Dec. 24, 2005

    British Presidency: the sad final act

    The long battle over the EU budget ended last week with an agreement that leaves everything unchanged. It was a rare display of hypocrisy. The horsetrading involved just peanuts for some of the major actors involved in the deal. Governments running yearly budgets of the order of 700 billion euros or more were fighting over a few million Euros. The final result is a six-year, 2007-13, financial package largely concentrated on transfers to agriculture (42 per cent of the budget) benefiting roughly 3 per cent of the EU population. Another 35 per cent of EU spending is allotted to structural funds whose effectiveness is highly controversial.