AGL 40.15 Increased By ▲ 1.61 (4.18%)
AIRLINK 128.10 Decreased By ▼ -1.40 (-1.08%)
BOP 6.15 Increased By ▲ 0.54 (9.63%)
CNERGY 4.05 Increased By ▲ 0.19 (4.92%)
DCL 8.49 Decreased By ▼ -0.24 (-2.75%)
DFML 40.70 Decreased By ▼ -1.06 (-2.54%)
DGKC 87.57 Decreased By ▼ -0.73 (-0.83%)
FCCL 34.15 Decreased By ▼ -0.85 (-2.43%)
FFBL 65.97 Decreased By ▼ -1.38 (-2.05%)
FFL 10.55 Decreased By ▼ -0.06 (-0.57%)
HUBC 108.63 Decreased By ▼ -0.13 (-0.12%)
HUMNL 14.56 Decreased By ▼ -0.10 (-0.68%)
KEL 4.64 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-2.32%)
KOSM 7.22 Increased By ▲ 0.27 (3.88%)
MLCF 42.56 Increased By ▲ 0.91 (2.18%)
NBP 62.15 Increased By ▲ 2.55 (4.28%)
OGDC 178.95 Decreased By ▼ -4.05 (-2.21%)
PAEL 25.75 Decreased By ▼ -0.50 (-1.9%)
PIBTL 6.05 Increased By ▲ 0.08 (1.34%)
PPL 146.00 Decreased By ▼ -0.70 (-0.48%)
PRL 23.86 Increased By ▲ 0.25 (1.06%)
PTC 16.20 Decreased By ▼ -0.36 (-2.17%)
SEARL 69.70 Increased By ▲ 1.40 (2.05%)
TELE 7.24 Increased By ▲ 0.01 (0.14%)
TOMCL 36.10 Increased By ▲ 0.15 (0.42%)
TPLP 7.81 Decreased By ▼ -0.04 (-0.51%)
TREET 15.47 Increased By ▲ 1.27 (8.94%)
TRG 50.45 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
UNITY 26.88 Increased By ▲ 0.13 (0.49%)
WTL 1.24 Increased By ▲ 0.03 (2.48%)
BR100 9,793 Decreased By -13.1 (-0.13%)
BR30 29,607 Decreased By -71.1 (-0.24%)
KSE100 92,066 Decreased By -238.5 (-0.26%)
KSE30 28,713 Decreased By -127.3 (-0.44%)

A promise by the European Commission to lift an 11-year-old ban on US poultry imports has proven too hard to fulfill and it was probably unwise to try, a top EU official said late Friday. "It is a very, very contaminated political area," EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said, referring to resistance in European Union member states to importing US poultry sanitised with a low-concentration chlorine wash.
Washington says the treatment is safe and that there is no scientific basis for the EU to block imports. Verheugen is the EU co-chair of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), created in 2007 with the aim of tearing down barriers to trade between the United States and the EU. To get the council off to a good start, both sides presented issues they hoped would be easy to resolve.
Verheugen said he was surprised when the United States put the poultry ban at the top of its list, but after getting the approval of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and commission members "I said 'yes, we can deliver that'." Now, looking back, "it was not the wisest decision to have that on the agenda," Verheugen said. "I'm absolutely not going to discuss it again," except to brief US official on the status of failed efforts to resolve the spat, he said.

Copyright Reuters, 2008

Comments

Comments are closed.