Search Results for: France

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared the acquisition of France-based speciality foods and oilseed processing company Cereol by agribusiness US firm Bunge.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE EUROPEAN Commission is promoting new hi-tech vehicle accident reduction inventions in a new report Research on Integrated Safety Systems for Improving Road Safety in Europe. It details the activities of its joint group in high-tech accident prevention, including industry and public sector members, who are trying to fulfill the European Union’s goal of reducing road fatalities by 50 per cent by the year 2010.…

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.…

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 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.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PROVIDERS of domestic care services to the young, elderly, sick or disabled, may be offered the chance to cut the VAT they charge their customers in the future, with the European Commission planning to extend a pilot scheme currently operating in Ireland, Portugal, France and Greece.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared the proposed merger between

Ernst & Young France and most of Andersen France’s business, finding that

although the deal would create France’s biggest auditor for large and

quoted companies there was “no danger of the creation of a single dominant

position.”…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has made it clear that it will not countenance the creation of certain special tax regimes within the European Union for so-called coordination centres, that provide services including banking, marketing, insurance and logistics to companies within an international group.…

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.…

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.…