Search Results for: Austria

From Alan Osborn
The European Commission has ordered Germany to stop blocking the

sale of the Austrian drink Original Schwedenbitter by claiming it to be a

medicinal product which requires special authorisation.

Original Schwedenbitter is sold in Austria without restriction as a

herb-based alcoholic beverage but is traditionally bought in Germany as a

cure for several illnesses.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IN a further sign of recovery from the fraught conditions of 2001, the Association of European Airlines has reported that air traffic in the European market rose by 2.8 per cent in the week to May 12th. This marked only the third weekly gain since the sharp fall in civil aviation which followed the political and military turbulence of last year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development is joining with Raiffeisenbank Austria to set up a US$12 million pilot leasing facility, to allow Russian mining and construction companies to secure equipment from top mining machinery manufacturer Caterpillar Inc.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations has highlighted how some member countries have been using their money laundering laws to criminalise corruption, while employing bribery or corruption laws to outlaw money laundering. A report by the UN Secretary General’s department on how the organisation’s 1996 declaration against Corruption and Bribery in International Commercial Transactions has lead to national laws being tightened regarding these crimes lists a number of case studies.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME sensible words were spoken recently by the EU’s agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler on the way forward for farmers. His starting point was the quality of farm produce. Noone is going to say that quality has ever been far from farmers’ minds, but until recently it wasn’t really the first consideration.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
Generally organic meat production in the EU is low, said, Jean-Luc Meriaux, general secretary of the European Livestock and Meat Trading Union. For instance, in the key sector of organic beef, “very little” is produced in the EU, he said.…

KEITH NUTHALL
A BID by a group of district heating companies to overturn massive fines levied by the European Commission, which found they had been participating in an illegal cartel, has been thrown out by the European Court of Justice’ Court of First Instance.…

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.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE CO-GENERATION of electricity from waste oil is being promoted in the European Union through excise duty exemptions, which have been erected in the face of official EU environmental policy, a new European Commission report says.

Its “Critical Review of Existing Studies and Life Cycle Analysis on the Regeneration and Incineration of Waste Oils” points out that Council Directive 75/439/EC on Waste Oils tries to make Member States prioritise regeneration over burning.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPLIT has emerged in the European Union Council of Ministers over the possible scrapping of subsidies to tobacco producers under a possible review the common market regime, which should happen this year. On one side in a debate at a recent agriculture council were a group including many of the EU’s tobacco growing countries, (Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France, Greece, Spain and Portugal), who are opposed to cuts, whilst other Member States, (notably Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden), backed a recital to a current proposal to adjust subsidies over the next two years that calls on the EU to review the regime this year “to allow the progressive deletion of subsidies.”…