Search Results for: European Parliament

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has dashed the hopes of Sicilian wine-growers awaiting compensation from the Italian government for unused replanting rights. The island’s regional government had planned to pay some two billion Lire, (about Euro 1 million), to the growers, whose rights had become worthless as a result of drought in 1988-1990.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FRENCH government is to be taken to the European Court of Justice by the European Commission over its refusal to allow medical laboratories established in another Member State, to open a branch or agency in France.

Brussels is also asking judges to tell Paris to scrap regulations contained within its national law, (Decree No.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission will shortly propose legislation significantly expanding the use of bio-fuel by introducing “compulsory market shares for bio-ethanol and bio-diesel in the transport sector,” the European agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, said this week.

Commission officials told Commercial Motor that legislation would ensure that by 2005 at least two per cent of transport fuel throughout the EU came from bio-fuel, (produced from sugar beet, cereals, maize and rapeseed oil), rising gradually to 20 per cent by 2020.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HOLIDAYS and pregnancy leave are a serious business, both for the employees who take them and the employers who pay for them. Unfortunately for personnel departments who might want a little more flexibility over whether they should shell out or not, recent cases at the European Court of Justice have underlined the right of EU citizens to take paid leave, rather than erode them.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released its priority projects for investment under its ongoing trans-European networks programme; the list includes a range of projects designed to improve rail links, in a bid to encourage freight operators to abandon road transport.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
GERMANY’S coal industry is to be allowed to receive Euro two billion, (about DM 4 billion and Pounds 1.2 billion), in state aid from January 1, 2002, to July 23, in 2002, the European Commission has agreed. The grants will cover operating aid of DM 1.9 billion, (Pounds 580 million), aid for the reduction of activity of DM 785 million, (Pounds 238 million), aid to maintain the underground mining workforce of DM 33 million, (Pounds 10 million), and exceptional charges of DM 1.32 billion, (Pounds 400 million).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has struck a trade deal with Pakistan that will reward its support for the west in the war in Afghanistan by scrapping EU import tariffs on Pakistani clothing exports and increasing import quotas by 15 per cent.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has thrown out proposals to weaken a planned directive limiting emissions from outdoors mobile equipment, by allowing manufacturers to produce machines with high emissions, if they also make greener engines at the same time.

MEP’s voted to scrap European Commission plans to introduce the so-called ‘averaging and banking’ system used in the USA, because it unfairly favours large manufacturers.…

Keith Nuthall
CERTAIN heavy-duty yarns have been included on a list of dual-use goods proposed by the European Commission for tight export restrictions from the EU, because of concerns that they be used to create weapons for terrorists and the military of unreliable foreign regimes.…

Keith Nuthall
A SURVEY of Wastes Spread on Land produced by the European Commission has supported moves to improve the quality of sludge produced by the textile industry, through the replacement of chemical products, such as chromium and copper salts, by products with a lower environmental impact.…