Search Results for: France

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPAN Commission is threatening possible legal action against France, to block its decision to extend aid granted to its aviation sector following the grounding of flights in the four days after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre.…

Keith Nuthall
FRANCE’S Loi Evin, which restricts the display of advertisements for alcoholic drinks, has come under attack from an unlikely source, a case at the European Court of Justice involving Newcastle United Football Club.

The team – locally known as the Magpies – is fighting legal action brought by Bacardi-Martini and Cellier des Dauphins.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DEFINITIVE anti-dumping duties on imports into the European Union of the fragrance fixative coumarin that has been manufactured in China have been re-imposed by the EU Council of Ministers. It agreed that a rate of Euro 3,479 per tonne should be set, reflecting concerns that the high 50 per cent level of previous dumping leading to the old duties being erected, (in 1996), would be resumed if the tariffs lapsed.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is demanding that the French public coal corporation Charbonnages de France repay Euro 20 million, (Pounds 12 million), of aid granted between 1994 and 1997 to its government’s central treasury even though Brussels had originally authorised the payments.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE VALUE of cattle, pigmeat and milk production in Britain declined by 1.3 per cent in 2001, according to EU statistical agency Eurostat. By contrast, it increased in Germany by 5.3 per cent, Italy 3.4 per cent, France 1.8 per cent and Spain, as much as 9.8 per cent.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
THE NATIONAL Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) of India is to explore the creation of joint ventures with state electricity boards as well as publicly-owned foreign utilities to meet its target of boosting capacity by 20,000 megawatts by 2012.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has lost a legal bid to suppress the payment of state aid by the French government to a cooperative agency that handles small-scale exports of French language books. The European Court of Justice ruled that the Commission had failed to understand that the subsidies did not help the Centre d’Exportation du Livre Français compete in the general book trade.…

Keith Nuthall
NOONE should ever accuse the European Commission of fighting shy of regulation, and given that proposals on promoting shipping safety are generally framed with good intentions, it would be fair to say that Brussels at least tries to improve standards.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN’S health authorities provide fewer drug addicts with substitution treatment than do a majority of other European Union Member States, a statistical review by an EU drug-use agency has claimed.

The proportion of “problem drug users” given alternative medicines to wean them off their addiction ranges between six and 22 per cent in the UK, taking into account available data, estimates the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A FINANCED global action plan to improve safety in the nuclear energy sector has been approved in principle by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A number of countries have pledged around US$4.6 million to fund its programmes, although this falls far short of the US$12 million price tag claimed by the IAEA, which also wants a fund of US$20 million established to handle security emergencies.…