The director of the French Office in Taipei, Olivier Richard, yesterday called for solutions to non-tariff barriers which impede French exports from accessing Taiwan’s market, saying there is room for improvement in bilateral economic and trade relations.
Richard, who assumed the position in November last year, made the remarks in Mandarin at a reception in Taipei celebrating the 223rd French National Day yesterday.
Taiwan and France have built up cooperation in culture and technology, with professionals in various institutions in the two countries maintaining good contacts, he said.
However, there is room to improve trade and economic relations, Richard said, as he pointed out that France was only Taiwan’s 24th-largest trading partner last year.
This could be attributed to various reasons, he said, with the foremost being the onerous non-tariff barriers in Taiwan that serve as obstacles to international trade.
Richard called for both countries to find mutually feasible solutions to lift the trade barriers through exchanges of views and reciprocal understanding.
He said France would continue its efforts to facilitate trade through the bilateral industrial cooperation consultation meeting, which is held annually to increase communications with senior government officials and enhance economic cooperation.
In her remarks on behalf of the Taiwanese government in honor of Bastille Day, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Vanessa Shih (史亞平) expressed the wish that the French government grant Taiwanese working-holiday visas in the near future.
The ministry has been in negotiations with its French counterpart over a Taiwan-France working holiday agreement since late 2010, and earlier last year the ministry said France was poised to grant Taiwanese nationals working holiday visas.
At a routine press briefing on July 5, Yaser Cheng (鄭泰祥), deputy director-general of the ministry’s Department of European Affairs, said the issue was hindered by the high unemployment rate in France, but added the ministry hoped that the agreement could be completed by end of this year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching