Search Results for: France

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.”…

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 EUROPEAN Court of Justice has ruled that the imposition by France of heavier duties on light-tobacco cigarettes, (which are mostly imported), than for dark-tobacco cigarettes, (which are almost exclusively home produced), breaks EU law. Ordering the French government to harmonise the taxes, the court dismissed France’s arguments that light and dark tobacco are essentially different products and liable to different tax regimes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has approved an application from France to extend for another seven years its right to reduce by up to half the rate of excise duty applied in mainland France to traditional rum from the French Caribbean and Indian Ocean departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and Guyane.…

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 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.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has suspended anti-dumping duties on imports of cotton-type bed linen from Egypt, ahead of the February 28 date when they were due to lapse, signalling it is unlikely to press for their renewal.…

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.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced a new Euro 149.2 million financing scheme under its Interreg programme, which can help local and regional authorities deal with problems in border areas. In this case, the Commission has identified the North Sea as a frontier zone, with money being made available until 2006 for transnational co-operation between coastal areas in Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.…

KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW report from the European Environment Agency has tried to explain why there is indeed a wide gulf between Member States’ performance on renewables; for instance, Britain has more wind than Germany, but significantly less wind power electricity generation and Greece has failed to develop solar panels as quickly as fellow southern Mediterranean EU Member State Spain.…