Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has accepted a request by the Greek government that local small scrap and waste iron and steel dealers and all Greece-based suppliers of non-ferrous metals, should be exempted from paying VAT, because of concerns that they are abusing the tax system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released a report on “Investment in the Community (EU) coal and steel industries” that tracks the sector’s performance in the European Union during 1999. The report concludes that although he first six months of the year was “badly affected” by economic troubles in the far east, “the continuing high level of internal consumption helped to avoid a major slowdown in economic growth during this period.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is to re-examine the safety of azocolourants, used for dyeing textile and leather materials, at the request of the German and Danish governments who argue that a ban agreed late last year by the EU Council of Ministers does not go far enough.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union internal market ministers have agreed to ban the use of azocolourants in the dyeing of a range of textile and leather goods. Azocolourants are dyes made from nitrogen-based compounds, which could cause cancer. Some EU countries have already banned them and the European Commission says this should be extended to all Member States.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking the French government to the European Court of Justice for failing to implement directive 1999/51/EC, which tightens restrictions on the marketing and use of certain dangerous substances, namely pentachlorophenol (PCP) and other organostannic compounds which can be used as anti-fouling agents on ships.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE NETHERLANDS government has been authorised to grant its national horticulture industry another six years of breaks from its energy tax on natural gas. The European Commission – which must approve special subsidies of this kind in the EU – has allowed the scheme to run until 2007.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
A CHILD of divorced parents is entitled to receive an advance on maintenance payments from a foreign government in the European Union if one separated parent lives in its country, the European Supreme court has ruled.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
PUBLIC expenditure on social protection – including pensions and health care, as well as benefits and social services – fell in the UK and the European Union between 1996 and 1999, having risen quite sharply in the first years of the 1990’s, a report from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency has claimed.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A PROPOSAL by the European Commission to end discrimination against non-EU nationals in the social security field could help local authority social services departments dealing with new immigrants ensure that their clients receive state benefits.

Brussels says that EU social security co-ordination rules covering the rights of citizens who move from one country to another, (and which up until now relate only to EU nationals, stateless persons, refugees and members of families and survivors of EU nationals), should apply to third country nationals in general.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced that it will make Euro 11 million, (Pounds 6.73 million), available for five regional programmes of innovative actions in Britain, funds that can be tapped by local authorities. The benefiting regions are the east Midlands (Euro 2.33 million), eastern England (Euro 2.27 million), north-east England (Euro 1.1 million), Wales, (2.83 million) and Yorkshire & Humberside, (Euro 2.75 million).…