Trade Policy Commercial Market Relationships, and Effects on World Price Stability: The European Community

International Relations/Trade,

Banana policy: a European perspective

European Union banana policies do not make economic sense, and hence criticism of these policies is justified. Some facts should, though, be remembered. If the EU had chosen free trade in bananas when the Single Market was established, certain producers both inside and outside the EU would have lost income, and it proved politically impossible to choose direct financial compensation. Also, the quantitative implications of the new EU banana regime may be less than sometimes assumed, as trade has not been reduced very much. The WTO's role is not to judge the economic merits of these policies, but their legal justification.Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,

TARIFF RATE QUOTAS IN THE EU

The European Union has opened tariff rate quotas (TRQs) after the Uruguay Round (UR), following the agreement that minimum access should be provided and current access not be restricted. The EU TRQs are described and their origin is explained. Descriptive statistics are provided in order to assess the implementation of the market access provisions of the 1994 UR Agreement. Transparency of the EU TRQ system and fill rates of TRQs are examined. Overall, the EU's record in the area of TRQs is relatively satisfactory, compared with those of other countries. Concerns remain, however, as to the exact articulation of the (regional) Europe Agreement and some quotas under minimum access.International Relations/Trade,

Die Millenniums-Runde der WTO-Verhandlungen und die Zukunft der EU-Agrarpolitik

The Uruguay Round has established completely new rules for agricultural trade, but not yet achieved much liberalisation. The current new round of negotiations will, therefore, have to make another big step forward. Countries’ views on what exactly should be agreed in the new round still differ widely. However, it is remarkable that no country has so far doubted the validity of the new WTO rules for agriculture, nor refused to engage in serious negotiations about further reductions. The EU has so far not had major difficulties to honour the new commitments that resulted from the Uruguay Round, though in the area of export subsidies the constraints have already been felt. In the new round of negotiations, EU export subsidies will be a primary target of negotiations, given the fact that the EU grants around 88 % of all agricultural export subsidies world-wide. It will, therefore, be important for the EU to change its policies such that EU agriculture can export without subsidies. In the cereals sector, Agenda 2000 has made a notable step in this direction. For other products, though, the EU will need more reforms in the future.WTO rules for agriculture, Millennium Round, EU agricultural policy, export subsidies, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade,

L'Accord sur l'Agriculture de l'Uruguay Round fonctionne-t-il ?

Le Cycle de negociations de l'Uruguay qui a abouti, a introduit des changements radicaux aux regles du commerce international s'appliquant au secteur agricole. L'Accord sur l'agriculture a modifie en particulier les conditions d'octroi de subventions a l'exportation, contribuant a ramener ce secteur dans le cadre general du GATT. Neanmoins, sur d'autres aspects, la realite est plus complexe, comme dans les aspects sanitaires, ou paradoxalement les accords signes en 1995 contribuent a rendre plus "specifique" le traitement accorde a l'agriculture par le recours a des procedures d'evaluation scientifiques particulieres, ceci a un point tel que se posent des problemes d'acceptabilite sociale de ces accords. D'une maniere generale, les accords ont ete bien appliques et ont assez rarement donne lieu a des differends qui necessitent d'aller au bout de la procedure de reglement prevue. Neanmoins cela traduit les contraintes relativement faibles qui ont ete imposees au secteur, au moins sur la periode de mise en place. Les grands tests de validite des accords de l'Uruguay Round restent a venir, en particulier lorsque les marges de manoeuvre actuelles auront ete epuisees et que des nouvelles contraintes plus "mordantes" se feront sentir, lors d'un nouveau cycle de negociations.Politique agricole; subventions a l'exportation; acces au marche; barrieres non tarifaires

The Development and Future of EU Agricultural Trade Preferences for North-African and Near-East Countries

The EU recently completed negotiating a series of Association Agreements with Mediterranean countries. Trade preferences for agricultural goods granted under these Agreements, as well as under former arrangements, are analyzed by calculating the value of preference margins at several stages in the evolution of preferences. The total value of preference margins for all countries covered was about 130 million under the agreements of the mid-1970s and increased by 48 per cent until 1995; by 2000 this value declined by about 14 per cent due to reduced EU MFN tariffs. The extended preferences under the new Agreements more than compensate for this decline and will result in a total value of preference margins of 226 million once all Agreements have entered into force.preferential trade, preference margin, Mediterranean countries, Euro-Mediterranean Agreements, preference erosion, International Relations/Trade,

International Negotiations on Farm Support Levels: The Role of PSEs

Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade,

Automatic Classification of Artifactual ICA-Components for Artifact Removal in EEG Signals

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Artifacts contained in EEG recordings hamper both, the visual interpretation by experts as well as the algorithmic processing and analysis (e.g. for Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) or for Mental State Monitoring). While hand-optimized selection of source components derived from Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to clean EEG data is widespread, the field could greatly profit from automated solutions based on Machine Learning methods. Existing ICA-based removal strategies depend on explicit recordings of an individual's artifacts or have not been shown to reliably identify muscle artifacts.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We propose an automatic method for the classification of general artifactual source components. They are estimated by TDSEP, an ICA method that takes temporal correlations into account. The linear classifier is based on an optimized feature subset determined by a Linear Programming Machine (LPM). The subset is composed of features from the frequency-, the spatial- and temporal domain. A subject independent classifier was trained on 640 TDSEP components (reaction time (RT) study, n = 12) that were hand labeled by experts as artifactual or brain sources and tested on 1080 new components of RT data of the same study. Generalization was tested on new data from two studies (auditory Event Related Potential (ERP) paradigm, n = 18; motor imagery BCI paradigm, n = 80) that used data with different channel setups and from new subjects.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Based on six features only, the optimized linear classifier performed on level with the inter-expert disagreement (<it><</it>10% Mean Squared Error (MSE)) on the RT data. On data of the auditory ERP study, the same pre-calculated classifier generalized well and achieved 15% MSE. On data of the motor imagery paradigm, we demonstrate that the discriminant information used for BCI is preserved when removing up to 60% of the most artifactual source components.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We propose a universal and efficient classifier of ICA components for the subject independent removal of artifacts from EEG data. Based on linear methods, it is applicable for different electrode placements and supports the introspection of results. Trained on expert ratings of large data sets, it is not restricted to the detection of eye- and muscle artifacts. Its performance and generalization ability is demonstrated on data of different EEG studies.</p