COAL COMPETITION

BY ALAN OSBORNTHE EUROPEAN Commission is demanding that the French public coal corporation Charbonnages de France repay Euro 20 million, (Pounds 12 million), of aid granted between 1994 and 1997 to its government's central treasury even though Brussels had originally authorised the payments. After complaints by rival coal suppliers the Commission now says that Charbonnages de France did not use the aid "in conformity with the decisions authorising its payment." It said that the group had been able to sell at below the world price in these years because of the ...


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