The European Commission organizes the pollution of our fields by industrial patented seeds
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 07 May 2013 16:22
Press Release of the European Coordination Via Campesina
(Brussels, Tuesday, May 7) The European Commission adopted a proposal on Seed Regulations yesterday morning1.This proposal is now in the hands of the European Parliament and the Council. The European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) denounces this incredible gift to patents and property rights of the agribusiness industry.
This proposal represents a violent assault on farmers’ and gardeners’ rights. Bureaucratic control is being reinforced, and the only outcome will be to definitively kill biodiversity.
This result is therefore the opposite of the reasons put forward by the Commission to reform the existing legislation, namely a need for administrative simplification and protection of biodiversity.
Read more: The European Commission organizes the pollution...
Karuturi guilty of tax evasion: Global flower industry giant found breaking the law in Kenya
- Details
- Published on Friday, 26 April 2013 17:21
PRESS RELEASE
Nairobi, 19 April 2013
The Kenyan government has found Karuturi Global Ltd, the world's biggest producer of cut roses, guilty of tax evasion. This is the first time an African government has brought a large multinational company to court for transfer mispricing through a fully public process. A broad alliance of civil society movements and organisations are celebrating the Kenyan government's resolve to stop such behaviour and to do so transparently.
In late 2012, the Kenya Revenue Authority ruled that the Bangalore, India-based multinational used transfer mispricing to avoid paying the government of Kenya nearly US$11 million (EUR8 million) in corporate income tax, part of a larger set of tax disputes with government authorities that amount to a quarter of the firm's 2012 sales. On 4 April 2013, Karuturi appealed the ruling, bringing the proceedings into the public domain.
To Reclaim Our Future, We Must Change the Present: Our Proposal for Changing the System and not the Climate
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 23 April 2013 23:14
The capitalist system has exploited and abused nature, pushing the planet to its limits, so much so that the system has accelerated dangerous and fundamental changes in the climate.
Today, the severity and multiplicity of weather changes – characterized by droughts, desertification, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, forest fires and the melting of glaciers and sea ice – indicate that the planet is burning. These extreme changes have direct impacts on humans through the loss lives, livelihoods, crops and homes all of which have led to human displacement in the form of forced migration and climate refugees on a massive an unprecedented scale.
Humanity and nature are now standing at a precipice. We can stand idle and continue the march into an abysmal future too dire to imagine, or we can take action and reclaim a future that we have all hoped for.
European Coordination Via Campesina is determined to defend family farming and small-farmers in Europe
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 23 April 2013 19:36
Press Release, 17 April- Fuerteventura
From 15th to 17th April, ECVC, a European association of small-farmers that brings together 27 farming bodies from 17 countries across Europe, including outside the EU, held its annual General Assembly in the Canary Islands, Spain. One of the Outermost Regions of the European Union, it is not only where Rafael Hernandez, president of Coag Canarias and outgoing member of the management team, grows his crops but also where Mario Cabrera Gonzales, President of the Government of the Island of Fuerteventura, has declared his intention to develop food sovereignty by promoting local production and autonomy.
This is a goal shared by ECVC, and represents a real challenge at a time when the CAP, currently under reform, has come under attack from agribusiness and defenders of major European farming, who are opposed to any change. The CAP offers little hope to the organisations represented by ECVC despite their considerable contribution to the institutional debate, aimed at defending small and medium-scale farmers, the majority of whom are based in the EU.
