Search Results for: Estonian

BY ALAN OSBORN
ESTONIA’S prime minister Juhan Parts said his government would not boost a planned 20% hike in strong alcohol duty rates, despite pressure from neighbouring Finland. Visiting Helsinki, Mr Parts heard arguments that next year’s planned tax change would do little to halt the boom in personal alcohol imports to Finland since Estonia joined the EU in May.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE NEW president of the European Commission, the former Portuguese prime minister Jose Manuel Barroso, has made clear that for the next five years at least there will be a reform-minded team at work in Brussels driven by a powerful desire to eliminate accounting fraud, inefficiency and the protection of special interests.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has admitted that translation difficulties caused by May 1’s accession of 10 new member countries is already slowing the adoption of important financial legislation, with the EU Council of Ministers accepting a six month delay for two accounting-related directives.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ESTONIA should hasten its electricity market liberalisation, helping to promote investment in an oil shale industry fuelling most power generation, the European Commission has proposed. It has asked European Union (EU) ministers to approve a derogation from the EU’s electricity liberalisation directive requiring full market opening – including the right to secure energy materials from any source – by 2012.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NEW EUROPEAN Union (EU) member country Estonia has been lent Euro 80 million by the European Investment Bank (EIB) to renovate and extend its electricity transmission and distribution systems. The loan to Eesti Energia AS should reduce its operational and maintenance costs, enable it to meet expected residential electricity demand growth and increase cross-border sales.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A NUMBER of key European Union (EU) directives affecting the insurance industry face delays of up to six months because of the failure of EU Council of Ministers secretariat translators to produce legal texts in all 20 official languages of the newly expanded EU.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
E-BUSINESS W@tch (NOTE – CORRECT SPELLING), an EU-funded monitoring organisation, is claiming that businesses in countries joining the European Union (EU) in May are embracing new Internet technologies rapidly – especially broadband – resulting in a smaller digital divide with existing members than expected.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE INSTITUTIONS of the European Union (EU) have invited applications for about 375 lawyer posts to help meet the demands imposed by next year’s enlargement of the EU from 15 to 25 countries which will add 75 million to the EU population.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ESTONIAN government has launched an inquiry that is expected to lead it to impose temporary safeguard duties on pigmeat imports. The Baltic republic told the World Trade Organisation it was concerned about the effect on domestic producers of a rise in imports of fresh, frozen or chilled carcasses, half carcasses, hams, shoulders and other cuts.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN Union countries will have to ensure that at least two per cent of their transport fuel supplies are in the form of bio-fuels – made from sugar beet, cereals, maize and rape-seed – by 2005, under a European Commission directive to be proposed very shortly, said Franz Fischler, agriculture Commissioner.…