Search Results for: European Parliament⊂mit=Search

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GOAL of creating a European Aviation Safety Agency to police common European Union rules affecting the sector has been achieved, with the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers settling last minute differences.

Resulting final amendments have been approved by MEP’s and the proposal will now return to the Council of Ministers for formal rubber-stamping rather than being haggled over in a time-consuming conciliation committee.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN’S health authorities provide fewer drug addicts with substitution treatment than do a majority of other European Union Member States, a statistical review by an EU drug-use agency has claimed.

The proportion of “problem drug users” given alternative medicines to wean them off their addiction ranges between six and 22 per cent in the UK, taking into account available data, estimates the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Union’s financial watchdog, the Court of Auditors, has found “significant weaknesses” in both the concept and management of Brussels key education programmes, Socrates and Youth for Europe.

Costing some Euro 998 million and Euro 141 million respectvely, (Pounds 600 million and Pounds 85 million), between 1995 and 1999, the programmes are designed to encourage co-operation and exchanges between teachers and pupils, foster language skills and inject a European element into curricula.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TENDERS have been invited by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to set up a combined heat and power plant at Voznesensk tannery, the Ukraine. Part-funded by the bank, it would be operated by the Ukrainian Energy Service Company (UkrESCO), and would command a total installed electric power of 1,9-2,2 MW, with two or more gas-fired piston engines equipped with a flue gas heat recovery system, producing hot water of up to 90?.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SHAPE of a draft European directive on controlling future foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks has been unveiled by EU health and consumer affairs Commissioner David Byrne. Speaking to the European Parliament, he said that the legislation would reform rules on vaccination, boosting the use of new tests to make this treatment more effective and avoiding the “unnecessary slaughter and destruction of healthy animals.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has agreed to exempt Poland until 2009 from new rules setting higher levels of minimum excise rates on cigarettes when it becomes a Member State, maybe in 2004. A current proposal would raise the minimum threshold to Euro 60 per 1,000 cigarettes from July, maybe doubling cigarette prices in Poland, damaging legitimate sales and reducing tax revenues.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is to update its monitoring systems for its trade in clothing and textiles with the limited number of countries with whom it does not have trade agreements covering the sector, which includes Taiwan.

Notably, the European Commission has asked EU ministers to update rules on surveillance and electronic documentation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LAST week a political deal was struck in Brussels on the shape of European cookie legislation. The result, in footballing terms: Lawyers 5 – IT industry 2.

On the plus side, the anti-cookie proposals of Council of Ministers, (which represents Europe’s Member States and shares the right of veto over this law with the European Parliament), have been softened, which should give some breathing room to the EU’s hard pressed Internet industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ALMOST all eastern European countries applying to join the EU have asked for special transitional periods averaging three years to raise health standards at some of their food processing plants to meet EU regulations. Products from plants where improvements are still being made will not be able to circulate the EU.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is piling political pressure onto industries, especially fossil fuel electricity generators, which pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, to force them to clean up their processes, adding costs to their bottom line.

In a move that will only serve to make CHP and renewable plants more competitive by comparison, the Commission is preparing a raft of legal cases against eight European Union Member States, to force them to monitor and restrict their production of key greenhouse pollutants.…