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BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GENERAL sale to the public of special paints, printing inks, varnishes and adhesives containing 43 dangerous chemicals is to be banned from April 2003, if a proposal from the European Commission is accepted by the EU Council of Ministers.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has ignored strong pressure from the American government to abandon its plans to exempt EU-based suppliers of digital products from charging VAT when they sell to customers in non-EU countries.

Sealing a formal political agreement on the proposal and sending it back to the European Parliament for further discussion, ministers stuck to their line that foreign importers of digital products, such as music or computer software downloaded from the Internet, should pay VAT, as the goods are consumed within the EU.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EXPOSURE of European Union citizens to man-made radiation increased by about 76 per cent between 1987 and 1996, a new European Commission report has claimed, citing discharges from reprocessing plants in Britain (Sellafield) and Normandy, France, (Cap de la Hague) as the “most important” sources of this pollution increase.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PUBLIC sale of printing inks containing dangerous chemicals named on a new European Commission blacklist could be banned from April 2003. Brussels wants ministers to amend a directive restricting chemicals deemed carcinogenic, or harmful to genes and reproduction, by adding 43 more ingredients, some used in ink.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States has released details of the talks held with the European Union over its threatened safeguard duties on certain steel imports into America. Washington said that it had responded to questions about the US International Trade Commission’s timeframe for identifying and defining like products; the establishment of a causal link between increased imports and serious injury to US producers; and the methodology for selecting a safeguard measure, among other issues.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IMPORTS of books into European Union Member States with fixed-price regimes should also be subject to the same controls as locally published books under a comprehensive, but very flexible, EU directive on book-pricing, the European Parliament’s legal committee has said.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers (general affairs) has extended the double-checking system on certain steel exports to the EU from Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic until this December 31. The regime is designed to detect any abuses of the trade preferences enjoyed by these countries under association agreements with the EU.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN Union ministers have approved two new directives that toughen EU-wide rules insisting that insurance companies have deep enough financial reserves to meet their policy commitments in the most unexpected of circumstances.

These solvency margin directives, (one for life insurance and the other for non-life), increase the minimum amounts of capital that must be held by these companies, (the so-called minimum guarantee fund).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GROWING thaw in relations between Spain and Britain over the future of Gibraltar and its airport, has prompted the European Commission to retable a long-standing proposal to establish a European Union regime on the safety inspection of aircraft from non-EU countries.…

Keith Nuthall
THE DEVELOPMENT of genetically engineered varieties of vines within the European Union has – in effect – been approved by the EU Council of Ministers, which has agreed detailed changes to the European directive on the marketing of material for the vegetative propagation of the vine.…