Search Results for: Dutch

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has performed a U-turn and has asked European Union (EU) ministers to extend for two years a pilot scheme allowing the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments levy reduced VAT rates (of six per cent) on shoe and leather goods repair services.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have been asked to approve a research programme stretching over the next three year at the EU’s joint research centre high flux reactor, at Petten, in the Netherlands. Funded largely by the Dutch government, the Euro 30.6 million series of projects includes studies on improving reactor safety, the development of medical isotopes, fusion, waste management and developing nuclear fuel helping to eliminate weapon grade plutonium, plus basic research and training work.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Commission competition officials are examining whether the German, Dutch and Belgian governments are spending too much public money on a Euro 200 million chemical gas pipeline project linking Rotterdam, Antwerp and Germany. The carbon steel pipeline will carry industrial gases such as propylene, avoiding the need for them to be carried by road or inland waterway.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Commission competition officials are examining whether the German, Dutch and Belgian governments are spending too much public money on a Euro 200 million chemical gas pipeline project linking Rotterdam, Antwerp and Germany. The carbon steel pipeline will carry industrial gases such as propylene, avoiding the need for them to be carried by road or inland waterway.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE NETHERLANDS has secured the help of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to reduce its greenhouse gas emission targets by investing in eastern European projects aimed at fighting global warming. The bank and the Dutch government are creating a carbon fund, which will draw on Euro 32 million of Netherlands’ funds.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CURRENT European Commission leadership, under Italy’s Romano Prodi, was supposed to be the clean-hands team, ridding the institution of the corruption and mismanagement that thrived under his predecessor Jacques Santer. The ongoing Eurostat scandal is undermining that reputation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has given the European Commission two months to identify and ban the transfer of sensitive air passenger data to the USA or face legal action at the European Court of Justice. In a near unanimous resolution, MEPs said pressed the Commission to review material being sent to the Americans, identify what should be protected under EU data laws, and then block its transfer.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commissioner has broken a Brussels taboo akin to the Pope calling for quickie divorces and free contraception, he has called on the European Commission to propose fewer regulations. Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch internal market Commissioner told a Netherlands newspaper NRC Handelsblad that tougher safeguards should be written into the new European Union (EU) constitution to curb his own institution’s “tendency to over regulate”.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT is an odd and depressing fact that employees who expose corruption, negligence and other malpractices in their work-place usually end up more reviled and outcast than those actually responsible for the wrong-doing in the first place. The institutions of the European Union offer excellent case studies in this regard.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A KEY European Union scientific committee has opposed a ban imposed by the Dutch government on copper-based anti-fouling coatings being applied to pleasure boats sailed in the Netherlands, opening the way for possible legal action by the European Commission.…