Search Results for: France

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANZ Fischler has given himself a tough job; trying to persuade dairy farmers it is time to expose themselves to unfettered world markets when prices are at rock bottom, while facing hostility to further CAP reform from some European Union governments, notably France.…

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.…

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.…

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 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.…

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

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 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.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MANY European Union Member States fail to give writers and publishers the royalty rights that they are due under EU law through their national public lending rights rules, the European Commission is claiming. In a report that could lead it to take legal action at the European Court of Justice, Brussels says that France, Greece and Luxembourg fail to give right-holders any remuneration for books lent from public libraries; in Sweden royalties are only paid to national or resident authors; and in Denmark and Finland, payments are only made for books in the local national language.…