Search Results for: France

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been given authority by European Union Council of Ministers (finance) to negotiate a comprehensive “Governing International Fisheries Agreement” with the USA. A Brussels official in the Commission’s directorate general for fisheries told Fishing News International that a future deal could lead to EU fishing crews being given access to fish US waters and for European factory ships to be allowed to buy stocks from American fishermen at sea.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EU agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler has sharply attacked requests by France and Italy for authorisation to pay national aids to wine producers in connection with the distillation of table wine saying they created “a serious risk of distortion of competition.”…

KEITH NUTHALL
A STRING of cases have been launched by the European Commission against Member States of the European Union to try and force them to comply with EU water legislation; under existing rules, failure to abide by the court’s rulings can see national governments being hit with huge daily recurring fines of up to Euro 100,000.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been given authority to negotiate a comprehensive “Governing International Fisheries Agreement” with the USA. EU ministers said Brussels officials should

Meanwhile, the EU Council of Ministers has agreed a regulation aiming at boosting cod stocks in the Irish Sea this year, protecting adult cod during the spawning season, notably enforcing an area closure from February.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PORK and pig exports from Luxembourg to the rest of the European Union have been banned by the European Commission after classical swine fever was detected on three farms in the Grand Duchy. The transshipment of pigs across the country’s busy motorways linking Germany with France and Belgium has also been blocked, along with the export of porcine semen, ova and embryos.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EXPOSURE of European Union citizens to man-made radiation increased by about 76 per cent between 1987 and 1996, a new European Commission report has claimed, citing discharges from reprocessing plants in Britain (Sellafield) and Normandy, France, (Cap de la Hague) as the “most important” sources of this pollution increase.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPLIT has emerged in the European Union Council of Ministers over the possible scrapping of subsidies to tobacco producers under a possible review the common market regime, which should happen this year. On one side in a debate at a recent agriculture council were a group including many of the EU’s tobacco growing countries, (Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France, Greece, Spain and Portugal), who are opposed to cuts, whilst other Member States, (notably Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden), backed a recital to a current proposal to adjust subsidies over the next two years that calls on the EU to review the regime this year “to allow the progressive deletion of subsidies.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared a significant legal obstacle preventing the French government going ahead with plans to spend national state aid on subsidising start-up short sea shipping runs.

Brussels has ordered that such grants would be legal under European Union state aid regulations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SERIES of good practice recommendations on the prevention and detection of e-coli outbreaks has been issued by the European Commission, following a study of how six EU Member States deal with the pathogen.

Officials looked at the monitoring and control systems for red meat and milk in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal and Sweden and concluded that although all were alert to the risks of e-coli contamination, there was a wide range of different public and private control measures.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking the French government to the European Court of Justice for failing to implement directive 1999/51/EC, which tightens restrictions on the marketing and use of certain dangerous substances, namely pentachlorophenol (PCP) and other organostannic compounds which can be used as anti-fouling agents on ships.…