Search Results for: European Parliament

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, has agreed a communiqué, stating that the EU must “respond to citizens’ concerns about…. issues related to outbreaks of infectious diseases and resistance to antibiotics.” The heads of government noted the intention of the European Commission to present formal proposals on the subject by the end of this year, signalling that they would try and give them a fair political wind within the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
MINING companies will have to check their guidelines regarding employees’ safety from exposure to mechanical vibrations from heavy pit equipment because of a proposed European Union directive.

The EU Council of Ministers, (general affairs), last week gave the proposal its formal approval.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has agreed reforms to EU rules on pig welfare. They now ban the confinement of pregnant pigs to individual stalls and tethering of sows and gilts. The amended directive also includes rules on improving the living environment of pigs and piglets, such as a minimum size of sow pens, and requires permanent access to rooting materials and fibre food.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has tried to make up for its failure to strike fishing access deal with Morocco by forging an improved agreement with its north African neighbour Mauritania which Brussels claims its “the most important with a third country” that it has made.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBERS of the European Parliament have proposed changing the name of the nascent European Food Authority, to make it a European Food Safety Authority. The proposal is one of 200 amendments agreed by the parliament’s environment committee for approval by a later plenary session.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SWEEPING changes to EU motor insurance laws have been proposed by a committee of the European Parliament, with the aim of improving the legal protection of accident victims. A report drawn up by the EP’s legal affairs committee has called on the EU national governments to compel insurers to provide either an offer or a refusal of compensation within three months of receiving a claim and sets an EU-wide minimum of Euro 2 million, (about Pounds 1.2 million), as the sum insured.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A TOP level EU delegation will fly to Tokyo next week, (July 9), in a desperate bid to salvage the Kyoto Protocol from being wrecked by the intransigence of the Bush administration in Washington. Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, and ministers from Belgium and Sweden, (representing the current and next EU presidencies), planned their mission after reports emerged from a summit meeting between Bush and Japan’s PM Junichiro Koizumi, that Tokyo would abandon the global warming treaty, if the US refused to sign.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development is to lend Euro 21.5 million to Balkanpharma, Bulgaria’s leading producer of pharmaceuticals, to support the modernisation of three production sites. It is hoped that the reforms will enable the recently privatised company to raise its standards to meet European Union and Bulgarian official good manufacturing practice levels, allowing it to maintain traditional export and domestic markets and increase its access to the EU.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has unveiled a series of new proposals that it intends to make in the latter half of this year, during the Belgian presidency of the European Union. In a statement issued by the Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection, officials have that they intend to follow up the White Paper on Food Safety, issued in January 2000, with formal proposals including:

*A revision of the directive on the control of foot-and-mouth disease, drawing on the experience of the recent outbreak;

*Amendments for a revised directive on livestock and poultry diseases, including measures to control salmonella;

*A new regulation harmonising and reinforcing official controls on food and animal feed;

*Plans to phase out the use of four remaining antibiotics authorised for use in feed and fodder;

*A strategy to reduce the presence of dioxin in feed and food.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE CREATION of a European Aviation Safety Agency has moved closer following a “broad preliminary agreement” by EU transport ministers on common rules for civil aviation safety between the 15 member countries. The European Commission has been given 12 months to draw up “adequate proposals” on how the proposed regulation could be applied to third country aircraft.…