Search Results for: European Parliament⊂mit=Search

BY KEITH NUTHALL
European Union transport ministers have dealt a heavy, and possibly fatal, blow to the EU’s Galileo global positioning project by refusing to provide finance for the crucial development stage of the programme. The 3.6 billion euro (pounds 2.2 billion) Galileo scheme is designed to establish a satellite-based tracking system that, when operative in 2008, will allow transport operators and others to pinpoint positions on earth and reduce dependence on the American GPS navigation system which is shared with military users and where signals to civilian operators cannot be guaranteed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TIGHTER noise restrictions on commercial aircraft visiting European Union airports have been proposed by the European Commission; it has tabled a new directive that would allow the worst affected airports to ban aircraft that marginally comply with the existing Chapter 3 standard accepted by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A FINAL deal has at last been struck over the extension of the European Union’s working time rules to the road transport sector; a conciliation committee representing both the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers have reached agreement over the outstanding issues, notably that of self-employed drivers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has extended its formal investigation into state aid paid by the German regional government of Thuringia to eastern Germany porcelain companies Kahla Porzellan GmbH (Kahla I) and Kahla/Thüringen Porzellan GmbH (Kahla II). Brussels is to examine subsidies of Euro 14.9 million, which it thinks were probably unlawful under EU regulations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has ruled that an EU national government cannot insist that waste shipments to another Member State are disposed of in an environmentally-friendly way, as a condition of allowing a cargo to leave its territory.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ITALIAN state aid scheme designed to help the European Union achieve one of its key post-Erika disaster objectives – the phasing out of old single hull oil tankers – could be blocked by the European Commission, on the grounds that it is too generous.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s plan to establish the satellite-based global positioning system Galileo has been dealt a heavy – and potentially fatal – blow by the EU Council of Ministers (transport), which has blocked finance for the crucial development stage of the programme.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has produced cross-border action plans to conserve eight species of birds whose survival is threatened in the European Union. Working with BirdLife International, Brussels’ guidelines will help shape Member States’ conservation policies, encouraging them to work together to save the bittern, the ferruginous duck, Steller’s eider, the lammergeier, the greater spotted eagle, the lesser spotted eagle, Bonelli’s eagle and the little bustard.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE NEW European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has now virtually completed its legislative journey through the EU institutions and is set to begin operations in the first half of next year though we’re still not sure where. Helsinki was the favourite for the seat until the Italian prime minister signor Berlusconi rudely pushed the claims of Parma, dismissing the Finns as “people who don’t know what prosciutto is.”…

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.…