Search Results for: Italy

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GOVERNMENTS and international organisations have highlighted tobacco smuggling as one of the largest illegal drains on their tax revenues. An international conference has brought law enforcement professionals together with health officials to fight this problem. Keith Nuthall reports.…

From Alan Osborn
The European Commission has increased its grants for the

restructuring and conversion of vineyards in the EU in the 2002-3 marketing

year by 5 per cent over the 2001-2 figure to 443 million euros (pounds 270

million). The allocation will be topped up by some 42 million euros (pounds

26 million) which was unspent in 2001-2 because not all countries could

justify claims.…

BY ALAN OSBORN AND PHILIP FINE

THE EUROPEAN Commission’s competition authority has cleared the purchase

by General Motors of a series of production and sales outlets of the South

Korean car manufacturer Daewoo.

GM is to acquire some of Daewoo’s production facilities for passenger cars

and light commercial vehicles in Korea and Vietnam together with sales

subsidiaries in Austria, the Benelux region, (Belgium, Netherlands and

Luxembourg), France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MINISTERS of the 15 European Union countries have reached agreement on the Trans-European Energy Networks directive. The ministers have essentially supported the Commission proposal of last year and Brussels officials predicted that the European Parliament will do likewise later this year.…

BY MARK ROWE
CAN the European Union’s single skies plan become a reality inside 30 months? It is a topical subject, with the recent crash over Germany underlining the arguments in favour and against the project, which should lead to planes flying above 28,000 feet being guided and controlled by unified units of air traffic controllers, replacing the current piecemeal system of national flight monitoring and guidance.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products has confirmed that the European marketing authorisation to Chiron SpA for Triacelluvax, (a combined diptheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis vaccine), has been withdrawn. The drug was only marketed in Italy and Chiron decided to cease selling the drug, as alternatives are available across Europe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Fund has agreed to invest Euro 25 million in “Merlin Biosciences III,” a pan-European scheme investing on infant companies that develop human healthcare products or allied technologies. Merlin Biosciences III will exclusively focus on biosciences, with particular attention to post-genomics, cell therapy, computational approaches to biosciences, bionics, nano-technology and system biology.…

ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared the acquisition by the Italian weaving machinery manufacturer Promatech SpA, of Sulzer Textil, the textile machinery division of the Swiss company Sulzer Ltd.

Competition approval was given after Promatech agreed to divest itself of rapier weaving machines operations in Verona in Italy and Solothurn in Switzerland.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank is considering plans to lend up to Euro 135 million to Italy’s La Rinascente SpA retail group, to help it build and operate one shopping centre in the Campania region, (surrounding Naples), and four new hypermarkets, (two in Campania and two in Sicily).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has filed an appeal against the dismissal of its cigarette smuggling action in the US against three tobacco companies: Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds and Japan Tobacco. Notably, it has received formal support in the proceedings from the US Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association for its action, along with the World Health Organisation, the US Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.…