Search Results for: Climate change

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Environment Agency (EEA) has released a package of statistical warnings that Europe’s environment is getting dirtier, despite efforts to prevent unsustainable development. In its 2004 EEA Signals report, the agency warns that airborne particulates and ground-level ozone are causing health problems in cities, despite a reduction in industrial and transport emissions (by 30 and 36 per cent respectively from 1990-2001).…

KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Biomass Industry Association and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report has claimed that using the full potential of biomass energy from farms and forests could power 100 million homes, providing 15 per cent of developed countries’ energy requirements by 2020, compared with today’s one per cent.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
COMPANY and private car drivers moving from one European Union (EU) Member State to another should not be required to pay fresh registration taxes when they change their country of residence, a European Court of Justice (ECJ) advocate general has recommended.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SITTING in a comfortable flybe. seat, maybe flying home from a colourful continental European destination, you will already know how Britain’s European Union (EU) membership improves your life.

Those simple passport control procedures at continental airports – if there were are any at all – are a direct result of the demolition of national borders by Brussels.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s much-heralded financial reforms will not be fully realised for at least another five years, possibly later, according to Jules Muis, the Commission’s former chief internal auditor.

“Although progress has been made, the Commission has a long way to go before it can present an image of being a world class administrative machine,” he told Accountancy Age during a brief return to the Belgian capital.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed rounding up the European Union (EU) alcohol excise duty rates from levels agreed for 1993’s establishment of the European single market, taking account of the 24 per cent inflation to 2003. This, said a formal Commission report, would “ensure that the minimum rates of excise duty do not become meaningless over time.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE RECENT sharp rise in the price of petrol and petro-chemicals has inevitably threatened prices and profit margins in the paint manufacturing industry but the effect is far from straightforward according to leading figures in the industry. This is because paint and coatings manufacturers do not buy oil directly, but products further down the chain such as vinyl acetate monomer and others where impact of higher crude oil prices tends to be muted.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GLOBAL Environment Facility has approved US$233.4 million in grants for 25 projects fostering biodiversity, preventing climate change, managing international water supplies and fighting land degradation, organic pollution and ozone depletion. http://www.thegef.org/Outreach/Media/Press_Releases/Umbrella_news_release__5-11-04_ENG.pdf…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Food & Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has warned that the number of domesticated livestock breeds worldwide is declining sharply, with 1,350 of the roughly 6,300 FAO registered breeds threatened by extinction or already extinct. The problem has been discussed by a special FAO meeting of national coordinators on animal genetic resources, which is developing a global plan to halt their disappearance.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is has given Belgium two months in which to say how it will prevent Flanders’ regional government from imposing distribution charges on imports of electricity from renewable energy resources, while not levying supplies from Flemish ‘green’ producers, that is directly placed on the national grid.…