Search Results for: Portugal

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PROCESS of transforming the European Union’s anti-fraud office OLAF into a truly independent operator, with enough investigative muscle and legislative teeth to make an impact in Brussels’ fight against financial crime, has proved to be a slow and difficult task, its latest report admits.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NEW international fishing deals are being developed by the European Union, which should allow fishing businesses to exploit grounds overseas while efforts are made to conserve stocking levels in Europe’s own territorial waters.

EU ministers have been asked to approve a deal negotiated by the European Commission with west Africa’s Guinea-Bissau, which will last until 2006.…

KEITH NUTHALL
IN what could almost be said to be a Brussels tradition, the beginning of the long summer break at the European Commission – when officials disappear to the south of France to lap up the Mediterranean sun – is usually heralded by the announcement of a series of legal cases against Member States.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has decided to come out fighting in its row with Member States over the liberalisation of energy markets. Calling on EU Ministers and the European Parliament to “rapidly adopt” its March 2001 proposals to completely liberalise gas and electricity markets by 2005, the Commission threatened to use exceptional powers granted to it under EU treaties to pass directives and decisions on market fairness, bypassing opposition from national governments and MEPs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
COMPETITION officials are examining a proposed German joint-venture merging the downstream and petrochemical operations of Deutsche Shell GmbH and its rival RWE-DEA. The German Competition Authority has been given the right to adjudicate on the downstream elements by the European Commission, which is itself handling the deal’s petrochemical implications.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has re-launched its civil case against Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, teaming up from the start with Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg, to scupper any further defence that the EU had no substantive complaint against the tobacco firms.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has re-launched its civil case against Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, teaming up from the start with Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg, to scupper any further defence that the EU had no substantive complaint against the tobacco firms.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRACTICAL advice on how local authorities can cope with the growing threats posed by floods and droughts have been included in a new report from the European Environment Agency, which claims that flooding is “the most common and most costly type of natural disaster in Europe.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission and European Court of Justice are shaping up for a conflict over the rights of national governments to hold golden shares in privatised utilities that given them special rights to intervene in shaping their policies, even when they do not own them.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has dismissed a claim by Portugal that its system of landing fee discounts for some domestic flights is justified under EU law. In one of the last legal disputes on this issue, judges ruled that the fees for Lisbon, Oporto and Faro airports illegally discriminated against foreign carriers and so broke EU fair trade regulations.…