Search Results for: European Parliament

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INCENTIVES designed to encourage European pharmaceutical manufacturers to develop specialist children’s medicines have been proposed by the European Commission; its consultation paper also suggests ways of increasing the testing of existing general medicines for their effectiveness and safety regarding young patients.…

Keith Nuthall
FINLAND has been ordered by the European Commission to change legislation that disqualifies car passengers from insurance cover when the driver is drunk and involved in an accident. Brussels says this exclusion of passengers’ injuries contravenes the EU’s second motor insurance directive which seeks to facilitate free movement within the EU and to safeguard the interests of persons who may be injured in a motor vehicle accident.…

KEITH NUTHALL
CONTINENTAL hauliers competing unfairly with British companies because of the low rate of duty of fuel in their home countries, may escape seeing tough rises in excise when the EU passes its long awaited energy taxation directive.

Agreeing that the legislation should be passed by December, heads of government at the recent Barcelona summit also performed an about-turn and said that the directive should “bear in mind the needs of professionals in the road haulage industry.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Free Trade Area Court has ordered Norway to scrap its discriminatory beer retail system, where mostly domestically-produced brands of between 2.5% and 4.75% abv, can be sold outside the state alcohol monopoly Vinmonopolet, while other largely imported pre-packaged alcoholic drinks, with the same strength, must be sold through the government system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NATIONAL regulatory authorities in the European Union have the power to decide whether the cross-border transport of waste to infill a disused mine is, in effect, underground landfilling, and so should be subject to tight EU rules regulating such shipments.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Council secretariat officials have told Lloyds List that the March 25th and 26th transport and telecommunications Council of Ministers will try to reach political agreement on the establishment of a single EU committee on safe seas and on the prevention of pollution by ships, which would replace a number of committees covering these policy areas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE DEMAND for broadband high-speed Internet services needs to increase in the European Union for the publishing industry to reap the full potential of digital technology, EU Enterprise and Information Society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen said at a meeting with key players from the continent’s publishing industry.…

KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union ministers have approved a new ‘solvency margin’ directive that increases by 50 per cent the minimum financial reserves that must be retained by EU-registered insurance companies writing air travel industry policies, as these are deemed by Brussels as ‘volatile-risk’.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s ambitious Galileo satellite navigation project was strongly backed by EU government leaders at their summit meeting in Barcelona and a decision to go ahead is now fairly certain to be taken by EU transport ministers at their Council on March 26th.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission wants to extend its fight against tax fraud by extending the existing Fiscalis co-operative programme covering VAT and excise duties to direct taxation. Ministers are discussing Brussels’ plans to spend Euro 56 million, (Pounds 34 million), on the plan over he next five years, funding improved electronic information exchanges, co-operation in investigations between national authorities, training seminars for customs and tax officials and exchanges of national officials.…