Search Results for: Netherlands

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has filed an appeal against the dismissal of its cigarette smuggling action in the US against three tobacco companies: Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds and Japan Tobacco. Notably, it has received formal support in the proceedings from the US Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association for its action, along with the World Health Organisation, the US Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL initiative to cleanse the polluted Barents Sea of nuclear waste has been launched, with Euro 110 million being pledged by Russia, the European Commission, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The Barents clean-up will be the first priority project of this Support Fund of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership; the sea, to the north of Russia and Norway, is commonly known as the largest repository of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste in the world.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
NOT many items of legislation from Brussels have provoked quite such anger among farmers over the years as the nitrates directive, which seeks to protect water from nitrate pollution caused by the application of organic and inorganic fertilisers to agricultural land.…

BY ALAN OSBORN AND PHILIP FINE

THE EUROPEAN Commission’s competition authority has cleared the purchase

by General Motors of a series of production and sales outlets of the South

Korean car manufacturer Daewoo.

GM is to acquire some of Daewoo’s production facilities for passenger cars

and light commercial vehicles in Korea and Vietnam together with sales

subsidiaries in Austria, the Benelux region, (Belgium, Netherlands and

Luxembourg), France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has ordered the Dutch government recover maritime transport aid it has paid out since 1996 to port and inland waterway towage operations, ruling that these payments broke EU state aid rules. Brussels approved subsidies from the Netherlands to towage operators, but had assumed that this money was for limited to ships working on the open seas.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MINISTERS of the 15 European Union countries have reached agreement on the Trans-European Energy Networks directive. The ministers have essentially supported the Commission proposal of last year and Brussels officials predicted that the European Parliament will do likewise later this year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TOUGH restrictions applied by the Austrian and Swedish governments on the use of cadmium in their territories are likely to be scrapped, after the European Court of Justice ruled that amendments to EU legislation permitting them to retain these rules were actually illegal.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE DECLINE in the European Union’s use and production of coal over the past 50 years has been documented in a detailed paper by EU statistical agency Eurostat to mark the end of the European Coal and Steel Community.…

BY MARK ROWE
PEDESTRIANS and cyclists involved in an accident with a car would be covered by the insurance of the vehicle, even if they caused the incident, if proposed amendments to European law are agreed. Changes tabled to the EU’s Fifth Motor Insurance Directive by Erkki Liikanen, EU Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society – will go before European Parliament for first reading this autumn.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has ruled that by allowing hemp fibre crops to be harvested before its seeds are fully mature, (enabling the them to produce cannabis), the Netherlands government broke European Union subsidy rules, which are strict on the age of hemp that attracts Brussels subsidies.…