GOLDEN SHARES
July 1st, 2001
BY KEITH NUTHALLTHE EUROPEAN Commission and European Court of Justice are shaping up for a conflict over the rights of national governments to hold golden shares in privatised utilities that given them special rights to intervene in shaping their policies, even when they do not own them.At the heart of the debate is the principle of "neutrality" regarding ownership, which was written into EU treaties, so that national governments retained the right to decide the extent of their respective private or public sectors.The problem was that the treaties were written ...
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