Search Results for: European Court of Justice

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN Union internal market ministers have reached a “political agreement” to ban the use of azocolourants in the dyeing of a range of textile and leather goods. Azocolourants are dyes made from nitrogen-based compounds, which could cause cancer.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE FUTURE of the European Union’s ambitious Galileo project remains in the balance after heads of government, in their summit meeting in Belgium at the weekend, re-affirmed the “strategic importance” they attach to it. The summit called on ministers “to continue work with a view to taking a decision on the funding of the development phase by March 2002 and to decide on the regulation by June 2002.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ITALIAN state aid scheme designed to help the European Union achieve one of its key post-Erika disaster objectives – the phasing out of old single hull oil tankers – could be blocked by the European Commission, on the grounds that it is too generous.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
European Union transport ministers have dealt a heavy, and possibly fatal, blow to the EU’s Galileo global positioning project by refusing to provide finance for the crucial development stage of the programme. The 3.6 billion euro (pounds 2.2 billion) Galileo scheme is designed to establish a satellite-based tracking system that, when operative in 2008, will allow transport operators and others to pinpoint positions on earth and reduce dependence on the American GPS navigation system which is shared with military users and where signals to civilian operators cannot be guaranteed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DETAILS of the trade agreements struck earlier this year between the European Union and South Africa have been published by the European Commission, in two legal texts submitted to the EU Council of Ministers for formal approval.

Assuming this is granted, EU import quotas for South African wine will rise to 353,000 in the New Year, increasing gradually every 12 months to 420,200 hectolitres in December 2011.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
The European Commission announced today (Thursday) that after three days of intensive negotiations an “historic” agreement has been reached with China on maritime transport. The deal is based “on the principles of freedom to provide services, free access to cargoes, and cross-trades, unrestricted access to an non-discriminatory treatment in the use of ports,” said the Commission.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE RATE of increase in biogas production in the European Union is much lower than that required to meet targets written into the European Commission’s white paper on renewable energy, the EU’s Eurobserv’ER(NOTE TO SUBS:CASE IS CORRECT) monitoring system has claimed.…

From Alan Osborn
The fashionable term in setting up international energy projects these days is “flexible mechanisms” of which the best known is the trade in emission reductions, or carbon credits. The Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, which guides implementation of the Convention, laid down emission reduction targets for industrialised countries but allowed flexibility to meet them through the purchase of emission credits from poorer countries.…

Keith Nuthall
CHANGES to a European Union directive, which forces employers to make provision for their employees of they become insolvent, have been accepted by the European Parliament; the proposals aim to extend the scope of the legislation to include subcontractors and the officially self-employed who work mostly for one company.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FATHER Christmas would have been appalled; European Commission officials have been censured for enjoying the hospitality of a Russian game exporter, which they subsequently granted permission to send reindeer meat to the European Union.

Jacob Söderman, the European Ombudsman has played Santa, ruling that these Eurocrats compromised themselves during a fact-finding mission to Russia, by allowing Sweden-based company Norrfrys Ab to lay on lunch, hotel and flight reservations, temporary fax facilities, interpretation services and inspection cars.…