Thank you for visiting our weblog.
Due to the year-end festivities, many activities in the EU and ACP offices in Brussels will be suspended. Therefore, the publication of news on the weblog and the dissemination of our weekly bulletin will resume on Monday 4 January 2010.
We wish you an excellent new year in 2010!
EU Presidency (Brussels):
- 21 December: Working Party of Foreign Relations Counsellors «Relex»;Working Party on Commodities (PROBA)
- 22 December: Environment Council
For more information please consult the calendar on our webpage http://brussels.cta.int/
EU PresidencyDr. Steve Wiggins is our weblog guest this week. Dr. Steve Wiggins is an experienced agricultural economist with interests in rural livelihoods, poverty, food security and nutrition who has worked extensively in Africa and Latin America. He leads work at the Overseas Development Institute on agricultural development, food prices and biofuels. Mr. Wiggins talks about spike food prices and the four major transitions that concern agriculture: the energy transition, water scarcity, the impacts of gas emissions and the consequences of climate change.
The European Union is considering imposing a tax on multinational corporations which shirk their tax responsibilities in developing countries while hiding their profits away in secrecy jurisdictions/tax havens. EU Development Commissioner Karel De Gucht suggested last week a tax in Europe for multinationals operating in developing nations but squirrelling profits off to tax havens. "We must take our responsibilities regarding multinationals based in Europe with activities in the developing world and not consider that financial transfer to tax havens have been duly taxed", De Gucht told a good governance conference at the European Parliament in Brussels. Asked for details, he said that Europeans should find a system to allow them to raise considerable funds for development aid. Currently tax evasion is "at least three times bigger than development aid", he added.