Search Results for: Italy

BY ALAN OSBORN
CAR registration taxes in the European Union would be abolished and road

taxes harmonised under a batch of recommendations announced by the European

Commission. Brussels said it was also examining ways of restructuring existing vehicle taxes so as to promote environmental objectives.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE is storming ahead of the European Union’s league table for the export of electricity, supplying other EU Member States with 69,479 GWh in the latest year for which comparable figures are available (2000); Austria was the only other significant EU exporter, supplying 1,296 GWh, although outside the union, Norway recouped significant earnings from exporting 19,055 GWh.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has taken an important step towards giving EU water legislation more teeth, by moving against Belgium’s system of “tacit approvals” of pollution. Belgian law allows companies to assume that they have a right to pollute if they make an application to regulators and then receive no reply.…

Keith Nuthall
COMPANIES and sole traders that alter and mend household linen, clothing and shoes have been granted the option of having another year of reducing VAT on their services by the European Commission. Brussels has decided to extend an experimental scheme, which allows Belgium, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Britain to reduce VAT on specified labour-intensive services to boost jobs.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union’s drinks industry is one of the continent’s key earners according to a report from EU statistical agency Eurostat, which says its productivity is much higher than that of the food processing sector.

The top performing country in the latest pan-EU figures available (1999) in the drinks industry was France, at Euro 103,700 generated in terms of value added by the sector per person in employment.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A NEW campaign to promote the merits of European wines is set to open in selected off-licences and other retail outlets in the next few months following agreement by the European Commission to pay half the cost.

The project, which involves spending of Pounds 3.6 million in total for all the EU countries, will stress the quality characteristics of European wines and focus on regional identification.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has granted clearance, under the EU’s merger regulation, to the acquisition of full control by Questor Partners Bermuda, L.P., of the aluminium business of Italy’s Teksid S.p.A., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Italian auto giant Fiat.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A NEW “smart card” for health and safety to be launched in the UK next year could have important implications for insurance companies in the occupational safety and health field. The so-called Prevencard is being marketed by the Spanish company Grupo Prevencard International using technology developed under the EU’s 5th Framework Programme for research.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ITALIAN leather manufacturer appears to have lost an international legal struggle to prevent a former German company from using a trade name similar to its own to market furniture upholstered with leather bought from alternative suppliers. In a test case at the European Court of Justice, Italian Leather, of Bironto, Italy, has failed to establish that a ruling that it secured at Bari District Court should overrule a decision made earlier at the Regional Court, Koblenz, Germany.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
SRI Lankan glove manufacturer Dipped Products Ltd has acquired a controlling interest in its European distributor ICO Guanti Spa, of Genoa, Italy. The payment of shares valued at US$855,000 (SL Rupees 81 million) is being funded from the company’s export earnings, Dipped Products told the Columbo stock exchange.…