Search Results for: International business

BY ALAN OSBORN
AS recently as 1989 Yugoslavia was the richest and most westernised country in eastern and central Europe and arguably among the more politically stable of them. But then came the collapse. The ethnic fighting of the early 1990s led to breakaways by Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina as independent states in 1992, leaving Serbia and Montenegro as the “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” under Slobodan Milosevic.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ANTIMONY mine in Macedonia will be a focus of an international effort to prevent cross-border environmental threats in south-eastern Europe. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) have agreed to cooperate on managing pollution risks from the Lojane Mine, which has also been a source of chromium.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SUSPENSION of chicken product imports into the European Union (EU) of chicken products and birds from Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Pakistan, China, South Korea and Vietnam will remain until March 31, 2005. The extension, (from December), of the bird flu ban was confirmed by the EU’s Standing Committee for the Food Chain and Animal Health.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH
STAVROS Dimas, the next EU Commissioner for Environmental Affairs, was criticised as one of the weaker cards in the Barroso Commission pack when he appeared before a European Parliament hearing last week.

There was cross-party sentiment that the former Greek Industry Minister did not have sufficient experience of environmental matters.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INCOMING European Union (EU) Commissioner for research Janez Potocnik has declared he would be prepared to build an ITER-scale fusion reactor at Cadarache, France, if there is no international agreement on where to build the prototype. In answers to a European Parliament questionnaire, he said the EU “could consider launching the construction of the ITER at Cadarache…with those of its partners willing to be involved”, although only at the “very last resort”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BULGARIA has come under fire for failing to effectively reform its shoddy mental hospitals, which have been described by a human rights group as “dumping grounds where people are robbed of the right to any activity and wait only to die”.…

Keith Nuthall
NEELIE Kroes, the European Union (EU) Commissioner-designate for Competition – called the Commission’s second most important job after its president’s – vigorously defended herself at the European Parliament against allegations of divided loyalties today.

Appearing at a hearing before parliament’s economic committee earlier today, she endured a three hour grilling from cross-party tormentors who included her Dutch countryman Paul van Buitenen, formerly a whistle blower and now an MEP.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A MORROCAN-French-Austrian consortium has won a contract in what the International Finance Corporation says is the first private-public-partnership irrigation project. The group building the US$85 million Guerdane scheme’s dam and water channels will be led by Morocco’s Omnium Nord-Africain (ONA).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SUB-SAHARAN Africa countries are restricting their growth through burdensome company registration regulations, claims the International Finance Corporation (IFC). It adds most countries in the region (bar South Africa and Botswana) have weak property protection laws. Chad requires 19 procedures to register a business, compared with two in Australia.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) has weakened the defence of two Frenchmen fighting criminal charges that they illegally produced a banned chemical substance used to help artists’ paints dry.

Olivier Dupuy and Hervé Rouvre, directors of Colart International, of Le Mans, are being prosecuted for producing and selling publicly ‘Siccatif de Courtrai blanc’, ‘Siccatif de Courtrai brun’ and ‘Huile Noire’, products with a high lead content.…