Search Results for: cars

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched legal action against Austria, Greece, Finland, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Sweden for failing to comply with a commitment under EU law to monitor average emissions of CO2 from new passenger cars.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers (environment) have agreed in principle that sulphur-free petrol and diesel should be introduced in every Member State from January 1, 2005, making the use of cleaner petrol mandatory from January 1, 2009; ministers agreed that sulphur-free diesel fuel should also become mandatory from that date, although this will be confirmed by a Commission review which will be completed no later than December 31, 2005.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FATHER Christmas would have been appalled; European Commission officials have been censured for enjoying the hospitality of a Russian game exporter, which they subsequently granted permission to send reindeer meat to the European Union.

Jacob Söderman, the European Ombudsman has played Santa, ruling that these Eurocrats compromised themselves during a fact-finding mission to Russia, by allowing Sweden-based company Norrfrys Ab to lay on lunch, hotel and flight reservations, temporary fax facilities, interpretation services and inspection cars.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the rulebook of the Kyoto Protocol all but written, the European Commission has been considering innovative ways in which it can help reduce the EU’s production of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Much emphasis has been made in the past on reducing industrial pollution or emissions from cars and lorries, but Brussels has now turned its attention to a source of the gases that is very much under the control of local authorities: waste disposal.…

Keith Nuthall
AN ACTION plan is being developed by the European Commission and the EU automobile industry to promote the introduction of high-tech safety systems in European motor-vehicles; the programme will probably include funding for research and the demonstration of innovations in the field.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENVIRONMENTAL crimes are in many ways the most damaging of offences, given that they can harm millions of people, whether through damaging the ozone layer, increasing pollution levels or damaging biodiversity. The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, (UNICRI), has published a study on this modern scourge.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE THREAT of thefts of nuclear material in eastern Europe is declining, despite the recent upsurge in Islamic terrorism, the Milan-based United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, (UNICRI), has claimed, in a study on environmental crime.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared a Dutch waste disposal system for car wrecks, following an investigation into whether it was illegal state aid. It is a voluntary agreement among companies, later declared binding by the Dutch government. It has set a levy for 2001-2003 of Euro 45 per car registered in the Netherlands, paid by car producers and importers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EXPENSIVE programmes and legislative initiatives made by the European Union to boost rail, shipping and combined transport, while shrinking the road transport sector, appear to be failing, according to a report TERM 2001, from the European Environment Agency.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
THE TORONTO Hydro-Electric System has launched a large-scale test of vegetable-based bio-diesel fuel in its fleet of more than one hundred cars, trucks and vans as a first step to converting to 100 per cent vegetable-based fuel.…