ACP Secretariat

4 April: Management meeting

5 April: Establishment and Finance Subcommittee

6 April: Subcommittee on Political, Social, Humanitarian & Cultural Affairs

7 Aprill: Commemoration of the genocide in Rwanda

8 April: MDFIP

European Parliament

4-7 April: European Parliament Committee Meetings

Other events

5 April: Infopoint Lunchtime Conference: Formation des entrepreneurs: un enjeu économique et social

9 April: Infopoint Lunchtime Conference: Creating a sustainable food future

The CTA Brussels News Service is providing EU-ACP policy news since 2004, on various key thematic areas. In addition to this news service, we also provide news on ACP intra-regional trade, and south-south cooperation (investments of emerging countries' in agriculture in the ACP regions). The main stories for the week are featured in our newsletter and all stories can be found in our Regional Trade and the South-South cooperation sections.

Providing branded high-quality dairy products throughout Nigeria and West Africa, FrieslandCampina WAMCO is a market leader on a mission to improve the lives and welfare of both its customers and the wider society. The company, an affiliate of Royal FrieslandCampina of The Netherlands – the world’s largest dairy cooperative, pioneered corporate citizenship projects in Nigeria in 2004 – long before corporate social responsibility (CSR) became fashionable. Since then, FrieslandCampina WAMCO has maintained three corporate citizenship programmes: a water project, school adoptions, and a tertiary endowment fund aimed at offering financial support to research in food science at six universities.

IAG Cargo has today announced the launch of a new B777-200 Cape Town, South Africa service, set to operate three times a week from London Gatwick. From November 24th 2016 the additional service will be running throughout the winter schedule. This extra capacity will benefit the buoyant perishables market in Africa. Over the past 12 months IAG Cargo has seen volumes of mangoes, avocadoes and pineapples, as well as floriculture continue to perform extremely well out of South Africa. Figures from the Perishable Products Export Control Board (PPECB) show that the Middle East, the European Union and the USA were major importers from South Africa last year.

The Netherlands has today imposed a first-ever sanction on a Dutch company for violating the European Timber Regulation. The sanction follows a Greenpeace investigation into the controversial Cameroonian timber trader CCT, who is sourcing timber from companies involved in illegally logging and exporting timber to several countries in Europe, including the Netherlands.(...) CCT is trading in timber sourced from highly destructive logging operations, several of which were exposed to be involved in illegal logging according to a Greenpeace report published last year. Greenpeace traced the timber from CCT to many importers in Europe, including one Dutch company, Fibois BV in Purmerend.