Search Results for: International Law

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s environment committee is seeking to prioritise a new European Union energy efficiency directive, by proposing amendments forcing the European Commission to introduce electricity consumption standards for particular products generating significant global warming problems. These rules would cover heating and water heating equipment, electric motor systems, lightings, domestic appliances, office equipment, consumer electronics plus heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
AUSTRALIA’S valuable minerals industry has welcomed the controversial draft US-Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which will remove tariffs from almost all non-metallic industrial minerals on both sides of the Pacific Ocean upon ratification. The Minerals Council of Australia said the deal would directly improve its exports of non-metallic minerals such as rutile and zircon, of which Australia is the world’s leading producer.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
JUSTICE and home affairs ministers of the 15 European Union (EU) member states (and the 10 countries due to join the EU on May1) are close to an agreement on a framework directive establishing the mutual recognition principle in matters involving the confiscation of the proceeds of crime.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has approved a proposed regulation tightening and harmonising EU food and animal feed controls. As it informally agreed amendments in advance with EU ministers, the law is now expected to be rubber-stamped. One change insists that national governments erect “effective, proportionate and dissuasive” sanctions to breaches of these controls and another says relevant information held by food authorities must be publicised quickly, except data “covered by professional secrecy”.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
INTERNATIONAL Paper Co. made a profit in the fourth quarter of last year, despite lagging demand for paper and packaging products in 2003. The Connecticut, USA-based company posted a profit of US$48 million, compared with a loss of US$130 million the same time in 2002.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has called for a moratorium on new pollution control proposals from the European Commission, claiming that national governments have quite enough new European Union (EU) legislation to absorb and administer already. Overwhelmingly backing a non-binding report on the Commission’s recent policy paper on integrated pollution prevention and control, MEPs called on the Commission and ministers “not to supplement or expand the relevant legislation at present.”…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US Sarbanes-Oxley Act has netted its first company, a small-town Virginia bank holding firm Cardinal Bankshares, ordered to hire back its chief financial officer. It sacked David Welch after he raised concerns over the company’s alleged practices of insider trading, faulty internal controls and financial reporting irregularities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNET public consultation has been launched by the European Commission into a planned directive laying down clear rules on the transfer of a company’s registered office from one European Union (EU) country to another.

EU internal market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said “I encourage all businesses, associations and lawyers with an interest in company law to respond.”…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIAN smokers have undergone a quantum leap in the past 10 years. From smoking the notorious unfiltered Soviet-era papirossi, they now have a wide choice of international brands, for whom this liberalisation has been commercially significant. Russia remains one of the more appealing markets for tobacco companies, with fewer barriers and, for the time being, a fairly laissez faire approach to advertising, as well as a burgeoning middle class with the disposable incomes to afford premium cigarettes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PUNITIVE tolls levied on Austria’s trans-Alpine Brenner motorway have been undermined by a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling, which has opened the way for hauliers to claim compensation against their effect. The decision is a precedent across the European Union and could be used to challenge other punitive tolls, designed to dissuade hauliers from using environmentally sensitive routes.…