Search Results for: European Parliament

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has lodged formal requests for three disputes panels to be set up to rule on steel import restrictions imposed by the USA, in the teeth of opposition from Washington, which is vigorously opposing the move.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has decided to come out fighting in its row with Member States over the liberalisation of energy markets. Calling on EU Ministers and the European Parliament to “rapidly adopt” its March 2001 proposals to completely liberalise gas and electricity markets by 2005, the Commission threatened to use exceptional powers granted to it under EU treaties to pass directives and decisions on market fairness, bypassing opposition from national governments and MEPs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CLOTHING manufacturing countries that are members of the World Trade Organisation have attacked the world’s major importers – the US, the EU, and Canada – for failing to even approach the liberalisation targets imposed by the WTO’s Agreement on Textiles and Clothing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the spending of Euro 119.2 million, (Pounds 74.71 million), of EU grants on rural development programmes in England from 2001 to 2006. Money is to be funnelled from the EU’s Leader Plus initiative via 23 Local Action Groups, which are to be selected by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has imposed definitive anti-dumping duties on imports into the EU of certain steel and iron cables from the Czech Republic, Russia, Turkey and Thailand.

Its decision – by the written procedure used during Brussels’ summer break – follows an inquiry, which “confirmed” concerns that the sale of cut-priced cables from these countries was harming EU producers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH restaurateurs and hoteliers could be forced to pay regular fees to record companies for piping music from radio broadcasts into their premises, if the European Commission wins a legal case against the British government.

It has asked the European Court of Justice to order the UK to scrap the existing system, where no royalty fees are paid to record companies when hoteliers and restaurateurs play radio background music, free-of-charge to customers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union ministers have been formally asked to approve writing the new Protocol on Water and Heath to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes into EU law. The treaty commits signatories to ensuring adequate drinking water and sanitation, while preventing waterborne pollution and disease.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has re-launched its civil case against Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, teaming up from the start with Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg, to scupper any further defence that the EU had no substantive complaint against the tobacco firms.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN EU satellite monitoring project, that will probably be funded under the oncoming European Sixth Framework Programme for research, is to play a key role in ensuring future forest conservation. It will check estimates of tree cover and other environmental data, the European Commission has said.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RESEARCHERS have been asked to bid for a contract to write the European Commission a ground-breaking report on environmental crime in the EU, that would try and establish firm statistics on its extent and seriousness. Its conclusions could be used by Brussels to draw up new EU action programmes and laws on eco-crime.…