Issues Calling for Legal Regulation at the Global Level

(Most of the above problems require that too, according to Rischard.) These problems include the following:

• Restoration of the tax systems: Globally mobile taxpayers (MNCs) move where the tax rates are lower (‘tax heavens’). The problem is going to grow worse as the number e-business transaction increases (business transactions made via the internet). Is it also necessary to introduce the carbon tax, possibly as part of a more universal ecological tax.

• Technological regulation: This concerns, above all, regulation of GMOs in crop cultivation, in using human cells for various purposes and in treatment of diseases. The reasons calling for regulation are mostly moral, but there are social and ecological reasons as well (possibility of endangering ecosystems and affected animal and plant species).

• Drug trade: About USD 150 billion’s worth of small drug doses are sold annually to about 200 million drug users. The figure may be 200 million more, according to some sources. Europe and the USA are the biggest markets with 60 million customers. Production of drugs leads to massive corruption in poor countries, restrains their economic development, and prevents poverty reduction. The use and distribution of drugs in developed countries, besides contributing to the worsening health of the population, is the cause of enormous crime.

• Trade, investment and free competition rules: Trade with agricultural products limiting exports from developing to developed countries is one of the aspects of the problem. Exports of products, mainly textiles, are limited in a similar way. There are no universally applicable rules concerning investment placement, which presents a disadvantage to countries to which foreign investment is directed.

• Intellectual property protection: Intellectual property rights associated with inventions, trademarks, the controversial protection of software, and the overall preservation of free competition rules are at stake here. Protection of rights concerning newly developed biotechnologies is a similar problem. This group of issues touches on the financial and legal limitations to the capacities of developing countries to make use of knowledge originating in developed industrialised countries.

• Rules for e-mail based business: With the growing numbers of such transactions and their proneness to misuse, they need to be regulated. This should be part of the new tax system. Individuals, trade, and companies need to be protected against cybernetic crime.

• Work conditions and migration rules: Global protection of basic work conditions (working hours, ban of child labour, work conditions for women, etc.), as well as protection of migrants, especially from developing countries (protection against human traffic, asylum rules, etc.) need dealing with.