Archive

KEITH NUTHALL
THE FAILURE of Greece, Italy and Spain to pass national laws, reducing sulphur content in a range of fuels, as required by a EU directive, has led to their governments being formally threatened with legal action at the European Court of Justice.…

KEITH NUTHALL
HAULIERS handling live exports could be forced to make costly improvements to their lorries to boost the welfare of their animal cargoes, if EU ministers accept a new reform package from the European Commission.

It has proposed a set of mandatory standards for the long distance transport of horses, cattle, goats, sheep and pigs within the EU, on journeys exceeding eight hours.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE CREATION of an effective pan-European rail freight network has taken a step forward, with the proposal of common operating systems for railway signalling and telecommunications by the European Commission. These technical standards include the specifications for the European Rail Traffic Management System, which will improve safety, for instance by controlling the spacing between trains and also emergency braking.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE PROPOSED EU directive on the training of professional drivers – which would make preliminary and continuing training compulsory for road hauliers – could receive its first reading at the next Council of Ministers for transport and telecommunications on June 27-8.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union countries are still achieving economic growth at the cost of exhausting the world’s natural energy and mineral resources, a report from the European Environment Agency (EEA) has claimed. It commissioned Germany’s Wuppertal Institute to use the recently-developed Total Material Requirement (TMR) indicator to calculate the EU’s overall burden on the environment.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GERMANY appears to be the most industrially innovative country in the European Union, filing 43.6 per cent of all EU patent applications with the European Patent office in 1999, well ahead of its nearest rival France, which filed just 14.9 per cent.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE MEMBER States of the European Union reduced their emissions of the six key greenhouse gases by four per cent between 1990 and 1999, according to a report from the European Environment Agency. This takes the EU half way towards achieving its Kyoto target of reducing emissions of these gases to 8 per cent below their 1990 level by the years 2008-2012.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBER governments of the World Trade Organisation are to examine in detail proposals made by the Australian government for the dismantling of bureaucratic barriers that prevent engineers and their firms from working in foreign countries. Its detailed suggestions were made in the ongoing WTO services round, which has just reached the end of its first stage.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SOUTH Korean government is continuing to bankroll its shipbuilding industry, allowing its companies to continue dominating this international sector, on the basis of unfair trading practices, a European Commission report has alleged. It noted that last year saw an significant expansion in shipbuilding orders worldwide, but that the 56 per cent rise in orders “benefited South Korean yards,” which increased their market share, rather than EU shipbuilders, whose share remained static.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SHELL chairman Sir Mark Moody Stuart has launched an environmental group, which aims to forge a common front among multi-national businesses initiative at next year’s second Earth Summit, at Johannesburg, South Africa. “Business Action for Sustainable Development” is to hold its first strategy meeting in October and is expected to be a vehicle allowing industrial giants to influence debates at the UN environment conference, also known as Rio II.…