On February 7

On this day in ...
... 1992, in a move aimed at further regional integration, the foreign and finance ministers from the 12 countries in the European Community signed the Treaty on European Union and the Maastricht Final Act, both of which had been approved 2 months earlier in the southern Netherlands town of Maastricht. This event transformed what'd been known as the EC into the EU, or European Union. (photo credit)
... 1974 (35 years ago), Grenada gained independence from Britain. Today the Caribbean island nation (flag below right), twice the size of Washington, D.C., is a sovereign state within the Commonwealth of Nations.

Treading a green road on trade

Check out the recent ASIL Insight by Julia Qin on the June 2007 "'green' decision" in Brazil – Measures Affecting Imports of Retreaded Tyres.
As Qin (left) explains, the European Communities had brought a challenge against a Brazilian law that bans importation of already-used-but-retreaded tires (right), based on the reasoning that the retreads have a shorter lifespan and so will find their way even sooner into waste heaps where they "create health and enivronmental hazards by providing breeding grounds for mosquite-borne diseases," and further "caus[e] tyre fires that are difficult to control." A panel of the World Trade Organization agreed, perhaps more so than Brazil wished: the panel "effectively directed" Brazil to extend the ban to imports of such tires from countries outside Europe; most notably, MERCOSUR neighbors that'd been permitted to sell the tires in Brazil.
In Qin's view the Brazil - Tyres decision could "become a milestone in WTO jurisprudence on trade and the environment" -- if, that is, it survives review by the WTO's Appellate Body.