Search Results for: Belgium

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched formal state aid investigations into the purchase of overpriced shares by the Walloon regional government, of Belgium, from the Flemish carpet manufacturer Beaulieu.

Officials consider that the payment was in effect a debt write-off, as Beaulieu settled a debt of BEF 113.7 million owed to the regional government by transferring 9,704 shares in the Holding Verlipack II company, also of Belgium.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A TOP level EU delegation will fly to Tokyo next week, (July 9), in a desperate bid to salvage the Kyoto Protocol from being wrecked by the intransigence of the Bush administration in Washington. Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, and ministers from Belgium and Sweden, (representing the current and next EU presidencies), planned their mission after reports emerged from a summit meeting between Bush and Japan’s PM Junichiro Koizumi, that Tokyo would abandon the global warming treaty, if the US refused to sign.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRUSSELS is always looking for big ideas by which it can justify its existence to a doubting public and one of the latest of these is the concept of a European Research Area. This idea is that Europe – with its patchwork of nations and national research units – should coordinate its academics and researchers, making sure that they do not duplicate their efforts, rather dovetailing them with a single European goal in mind.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
In a test of national and international procedures to be followed after a nuclear accident, a simulated emergency has been carried out at the French reactor at Gravelines, near the border with Belgium across the English Channel. The test, which took place on May 22-23, involved “small plume of radioactivity being vented from the reactor, covering an evacuation area of 10 kilometres radius,” said David Kyd, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ADMINISTRATIVE reforms made by the Belgian government in the wake of the dioxin contamination crisis have been judged so effective by the European Commission, that it has decided to drop a European Court of Justice case against alleging that Belgium had broken EU food safety laws.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A LACK of coordination amongst EU Member States’ research teams regarding the study of BSE has been revealed by a new European inventory of previous work and that in progress, collated by the European Commission.

It has highlighted areas where better links between national research programmes is required.…

KEITH NUTHALL
FISH farming companies and organisations have until September 30 to submit papers to the European Commission, if they want them to be considered as part of an ongoing review of the Common Fisheries Policy, that could create root-and-branch reforms to the way that Brussels impacts on the industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CRIMINALS are still fleecing the European Union’s budget of hundreds-of-millions of Euro, according to the latest European Commission fraud report. But Brussels is refusing to throw in the towel, unveiling more anti-fraud proposals, Keith Nuthall reports.

THE ANNUAL report on the Protection of the Communities’ (EU’s) Financial Interests and the Fight Against Fraud always seems to have been misnamed, in that it usually focuses on how much money the European Union has been losing to fraudsters, rather than saving.…

Keith Nuthall
ALTHOUGH petrol and diesel consumption rose by 45 per cent in the European Union between 1985 and 1998, technological improvements meant pollution by emissions such as nitrogen oxide actually fell during this time, a study from Eurostat, the EU statistical agency has claimed.…

KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBER States of the European Union have been placed under increasing political and legal pressure from both the European Commission and the European Court of Justice to improve the environmental quality of their water supplies.

France, for instance, has lost a long-running case at the ECJ, over its failure to ensure the availability of sufficiently clean drinking water in Brittany.…