Search Results for: Belgium

KEITH NUTHALL
THE CO-GENERATION of electricity from waste oil is being promoted in the European Union through excise duty exemptions, which have been erected in the face of official EU environmental policy, a new European Commission report says.

Its “Critical Review of Existing Studies and Life Cycle Analysis on the Regeneration and Incineration of Waste Oils” points out that Council Directive 75/439/EC on Waste Oils tries to make Member States prioritise regeneration over burning.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TECHNOLOGICAL advancement seems to go hand in hand with miniaturisation; witness the development of the mobile phone from its 1980’s high-tech brick to today’s tiny handset; smaller than the devices used by Captain Kirk in the early Star Trek episodes that peered centuries into the future.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced a new Euro 149.2 million financing scheme under its Interreg programme, which can help local and regional authorities deal with problems in border areas. In this case, the Commission has identified the North Sea as a frontier zone, with money being made available until 2006 for transnational co-operation between coastal areas in Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has suspended anti-dumping duties on imports of cotton-type bed linen from Egypt, ahead of the February 28 date when they were due to lapse, signalling it is unlikely to press for their renewal.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND MARK ROWE
ALTHOUGH the future of the controversial bilateral open skies agreements, struck between the United States and a string of European Union Member States, has been thrown into doubt by an advocate general of the European Court of Justice, this is by no means regarded as a disaster by Europe’s airport industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission may threaten legal action against national governments in the European Union, after 12 out of 16 Member States failed to meet the January 16 deadline for implementing the EU e-commerce directive. A statement from Brussels has revealed that only Luxembourg, Austria and Germany approved laws based on the directive by that date.…

KEITH NUTHALL
AN APPEAL has been made by the European Commission for experts in renewables and energy efficiency to apply for places on specialist panels helping them operate spending programmes in the fields, Save and Altener.

It has called for applications from specialists in:

*Energy efficiency in residential, commercial and public buildings, industry and transport;

*Integrated actions combining energy efficiency and renewable energy sources in buildings, industry and transport;

*Renewable energy sources for heat production and electricity production, as well as the integration of green power supplies with standard electricity markets and renewable energy sources in transport.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SERIES of good practice recommendations on the prevention and detection of e-coli outbreaks has been issued by the European Commission, following a study of how six EU Member States deal with the pathogen.

Officials looked at the monitoring and control systems for red meat and milk in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal and Sweden and concluded that although all were alert to the risks of e-coli contamination, there was a wide range of different public and private control measures.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has formally called on Belgium to bring into its national law a decree ensuring that authors and other copyright holders are paid when their works are provided for lending to the public. Since 1994, Belgium has failed to make any payments, nor has it proposed any alternative compensation, and “damage has been suffered by right-holders of every nationality,” in breach of EU law, the Commission claimed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BELGIAN government has been put on legal notice by the European Commission that it could be heavily fined by the European Court of Justice for its failure to abide by rulings made in 1999 opposing Belgium’s cargo sharing shipping deals with five African countries, namely Togo, Mali, Senegal, the Ivory Coast and its former colony, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.…