Search Results for: european union

Keith Nuthall
A PETITION opposing plans to expand Madrid’s Baraja airport has been presented to the European Parliament by 12 mayors from Spain’s capital district. They claim that the project’s diversion of the River Jarama would have serious consequences for water management and the environment and an expansion would create more air noise.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL Labour Organisation meeting has issued detailed recommendations on how to improve industrial relations in the oil and gas production and refining industries. The paper concludes that industrial relations in the sector will become more complex as it juggles environmental and social concerns with cost reduction.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEP’s are trying to water down a strongly centralised European Union “Community Patent” system, that would grant jurisdiction over disputes to a new EU intellectual property court; instead, the European Parliament’s legal affairs committee is calling for national courts to be given the job.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
TROUBLED South African textile company Mooi-River Textiles, based in KwaZulu Natal, may remain open, despite concerns of imminent closure. The announcement follows a report that the company would be reopening talks with the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union to save the business’s 140 jobs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has “expressed concern” and “disappointment” over China’s failure to met a January 1 deadline to establish low duty tariff quotas for imports of wheat, maize, rice, soybean oil, palm oil, rapeseed oil and sugar, under its WTO accession terms.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has begun a “vast computer project” designed to shorten the time spent on translating judgements and other legal documents into each of the European Union’s 11 official languages.

At present an author’s judicial text is analysed by a lawyer linguist who identifies terminological or legal references and inserts them in all the languages as hyperlinks.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union’s anti-fraud unit OLAF has reacted angrily to the leaking to German news magazine Stern of a confidential dossier of new EU corruption allegations compiled last year by Brussels whistle-blower Paul van Buitenen. Since he handed his report in August to OLAF and the Commission’s administration directorate, officials have been “analysing” its contents and discussing how to follow it up.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LITHUANIA is trying to pressure the European Union into paying it massive financial support for decommissioning Ignalina nuclear power plant by 2009, which Brussels is demanding as a condition for allowing Vilnius to join the EU. In ongoing accession negotiations, Lithuania claims it cannot afford to carry out the work, estimating that it will cost Euro 3 billion.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has approved the rules governing the operation of the International Jute Study Group 2001. It replaced the work of the old International Jute Agreement, which was wound up last October.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is piling political pressure onto industries, especially fossil fuel electricity generators, which pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, to force them to clean up their processes, adding costs to their bottom line.

In a move that will only serve to make CHP and renewable plants more competitive by comparison, the Commission is preparing a raft of legal cases against eight European Union Member States, to force them to monitor and restrict their production of key greenhouse pollutants.…