Search Results for: Greek

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GREECE is being threatened with legal action by the European Commission over its failure to abide by European Union (EU) rules insisting on international open tendering for its schoolbook production. The Commission has warned Greece of European Court of Justice action for allowing the national Organisation for the Publication of Schoolbooks to order supplies from between 80-90 Athens-area publishers and printers every year, without launching a tender.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and ALAN OSBORN
ACCESS rights to drive across ecologically-sensitive Alpine passes in Switzerland and Austria – plus to Bulgaria and Romania – are being granted to hauliers from the 10 eastern and southern European countries joining the European Union (EU) in May.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FUTURE sale of Greece’s Olympic Airlines is being threatened by a formal state aid investigation launched this week (Wed 17-3) by the European Commission, which has stressed its determination that the privatisation of the airline should go ahead without any illegal state aid being paid by the Greek government.…

KEITH NUTHALL
GREEK and American researchers say they have developed a fuel-cell reactor which can produce hydrogen from ethanol. Scientists from the universities of Patras and Minnesota claim that the invention could be a major advance in creating viable hydrogen-based energy systems, because the technology could be used in small fuel cells generating 350 watt-hours of electricity.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FINAL details of an agreement to install an interconnector linking the gas networks of Greece and Turkey – historically hostile enemies – have been struck, a move welcomed by the European Commission. The deal involves a Euro 250 million, 285 kilometre, gas pipeline being built between Komotini in Greek Thrace, with Karacabey, in Turkey, near Istanbul, through cooperation between Greek Natural Gas Company (DEPA) and Turkish gas company BOTAS.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SERIES of exemptions from the European Union’s (EU) new energy taxation directive have been proposed by the European Commission for the eastern and southern European countries joining the EU in May (barring Cyprus).

They would be added to the already long list of exemptions negotiated by existing Member States that prompted EU internal market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein to liken the legislation to “Gruyere cheese”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have been asked to approve a detailed fishing access deal allowing EU fishing boats access to the Atlantic fishing waters off west Africa’a Guinea Bissau until June 2006. Under the agreement, licences to fish shrimp will be granted to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek vessels, with boats from Spain (enjoying the overwhelming majority of rights), Italy and Greece being allowed to take fin-fish/cephalopods.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE ANNUAL report of the European Union’s (EU) financial watchdog, the Court of Auditors, says that checks made by the Greek authorities to decide to what extent local cotton growers should reduce output under EU schemes designed to restrict overproduction “are inconsistent with the results of checks on individual producers.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) financial watchdog – the Court of Auditors – has discovered “weaknesses” in the EU’s scheme for subsidising cotton production in Greece and Spain and has called on the European Commission to correct matters in its proposed reform of the Common Agricultural Policy.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AFTER a long period of consultation, a comprehensive directive protecting the European Union’s (EU) groundwater reserves has been proposed by the European Commission, which would force Member States to establish and police locally sensitive pollution limits. The legislation would insist that national governments carefully monitor groundwater quality and take steps to reverse its pollution, where it has exceeded these self-imposed thresholds.…