Search Results for: European Court of Justice

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SUGAR beet processing and production companies from Italy have failed to overturn a EU Council of Ministers decision to phase out by this year special state ‘adjustment’ aid paid to their sector. Sadam Zuccherifici, Sadam Castiglionese, Sadam Abruzzo, Zuccherificio del Molise and Società Fondiaria Industriale Romagnola had claimed that ministers had not followed proper procedures.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission and European Court of Justice are shaping up for a conflict over the rights of national governments to hold golden shares in privatised utilities that given them special rights to intervene in shaping their policies, even when they do not own them.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE GERMAN travel firm Preussag has been cleared by the European

Commission to take full control of the Belgian subsidiary of the TUI

group which it had had previously shared with the Belgian firm Imobra. TUI Belgium controls the tour operator Jet Air.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Space Agency has been battling to save face after the launch of its most sophisticated navigation and mobile communications satellite went wrong, sending Artemis into an unplanned orbit that would prevent its auto-related technology from working properly.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WASTEWATER

The European Commission has decided to take France and Belgium to the court for flouting the EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. France, alleges the Commission, has failed to identify enough sensitive areas bodies of water that are eutrophic, or are otherwise seriously polluted by wastewater.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
GOVERNMENTS may prevent the formation of multi-disciplinary partnerships combining accountants and lawyers under EU law, an Advocate General of the European Court of Justice has suggested. In a formal opinion to the full ECJ, Philippe Léger said that there is a “certain incompatibility” between the two activities, and a law that prohibits collaboration “may be justified.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank has called on eastern European and central Asian governments to improve their woeful record of judicial reform, in a region where independent justice is still struggling to emerge from the region’s communist legacy.

Speaking at a regional conference in St Petersburg, Russia, Johannes Linn, bank vice president said: “It is quite clear…that the countries of the region need to focus much more effort, not only on ensuring the development of clear and comprehensive legislation, but also on strengthening the capacity, independence, and accountability of the judicial system necessary to interpret and enforce the law.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A MAJOR European Union research study has concluded that the ‘true’ price of using coal and oil to generate electricity is double that usually assumed by standard accounting systems, when the costs of cleaning up the resulting pollution and dealing with the resulting health problems are taken into account.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EURELECTRIC has welcomed the publication of guidelines from the European Commission that encourage local and national public authorities to use EU legislation on public procurement to promote the purchase of environmentally friendly goods and services.

Importantly, said Lars Peter Svane, the federation’s head of market regulation, the Commission’s “interpretive communication” does not advise local and national governments to adapt procurement practices so that environmental good practice automatically becomes a sales condition.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THREATS of delays to the distribution of ecopoints permits, allowing hauliers to cross ecologically sensitive Austrian Alpine passes, have been lifted, with the European Commission abandoning plans to cut back allocations. The move had been opposed by the EU Council of Ministers, leading to concerns about an political stand-off.…