Search Results for: European Parliament

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has formally approved new EU-wide rules limiting the emissions of light vans, (of weight categories 1,305-1,760kg and more than 1,760kg), during cold starts. There are currently no European limits on this kind of pollution from these commercial vehicles.…

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.…

Keith Nuthall
CHANGES to a European Union directive, which forces employers to make provision for their employees of they become insolvent, have been accepted by the European Parliament; the proposals aim to extend the scope of the legislation to include subcontractors and the officially self-employed who work mostly for one company.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
The European Commission is now re-thinking its strategy over ship-building following rejection of its favoured approach by the EU Council of Industry Ministers on Wednesday.

Mr Heinz Mico, a spokesman for the trade commissioner Pascal Lamy, said the extension of the EU’s case at the WTO to include LNG carriers would only be realistic if there were “good reasons” for it that went beyond the complaint of one country.…

KEITH NUTHALL
INNOVATION is important in the provision of water services, whether that be to prevent the contamination of supplies by a return of this summer’s floods, or to source drinking water for arid areas where ground reserves are running dry.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank is lending a town in northern Sweden Euro 33 million to build a biomass fuelled combined heat and power station, which will consume a fuel that is widely available in the area: timber and wood chips.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union research project – the Medicago scheme – is trying to discover knowledge about the genes of legumes such as the grain pea to boost their usage in Europe; five per cent of cultivated EU farmland is used for legume production, compared with more than 25 per cent in the USA.…

Keith Nuthall
THE SWIFT referral of merger cases from the European Commission to national authorities in Member States where the deal will have an overwhelming impact, has been suggested in a green paper has been issued by Brussels. The Commission currently has jurisdiction over some larger merger cases, even where participants are from the same Member State and Brussels wants these quickly transferred to national competition tribunals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
OFFICIALS in Brussels are considering how to avoid the creation of a legal void next July when the European Coal and Steel Community expires and the European Commission is supposed to transfer its Euro 1.6 billion assets and liabilities to the main European Union budget.…

From Alan Osborn
The fashionable term in setting up international energy projects these days is “flexible mechanisms” of which the best known is the trade in emission reductions, or carbon credits. The Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, which guides implementation of the Convention, laid down emission reduction targets for industrialised countries but allowed flexibility to meet them through the purchase of emission credits from poorer countries.…