Search Results for: Italian

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commissioner has broken a Brussels taboo akin to the Pope calling for quickie divorces and free contraception, he has called on the European Commission to propose fewer regulations. Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch internal market Commissioner told a Netherlands newspaper NRC Handelsblad that tougher safeguards should be written into the new European Union (EU) constitution to curb his own institution’s “tendency to over regulate”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union competition Commissioner Mario Monti has called for close cooperation between international business regulators such as the European Commission and their opposite numbers in national governments and in north America. Speaking to the World Forum on Energy Regulation, in Rome, Monti said that by combining their efforts, competition authorities would “achieve more than each would be able to achieve on its own.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
The European Commission has granted clearance under the Merger Regulation to the acquisition by the Italian energy company Enel Produzione S.p.A of a stake in Spanish electricity producer Unión Fenosa Energías Especiales S.A., which is currently wholly controlled by Unión Fenosa Generación S.A.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has clarified national government powers over the authorisation of novel foods containing GM material. In a case involving Monsanto Italia and the Italian government, the ECJ ruled that the presence of GM protein residues in novel foods does not prevent them being cleared for sale under a “simplified procedure,” but only where there is no risk to human health.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE STRING of power failures that recently hit Italy, Germany, Britain and other European countries has pushed the need to guarantee the security of the European Union’s (EU) energy supply up the agenda of the EU’s current Italian presidency.…

BY MARK ROWE
GOVERNMENTS across Europe face revising the way in which they charge telecommunications companies for licences, following a ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The court decided that European Union (EU) rules in the telecommunications sector prohibit EU Member States from imposing financial charges on licence holders calculated on the basis of their turnover.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is lending Euro 16 million to two Serbian agribusiness companies – Fabrika TE-TO Senta and Star Secer (Nova Crnja) – both owned by Italian sugar producer SFIR Group – to purchase beets from local farmers, boosting their liquidity.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union ministers have moved towards extending common rules on liberalisation, market power and network access to the broadband sector, following an informal meeting on telecommunications. Staged in Viterbo, Italy, by the current Italian presidency of the EU, the meeting’s conclusions called for coordinated action by Member States to promote broadband development.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRECISE guidance about the legality under European law of government intervention to make good damage caused by natural disasters is likely to emerge from a new European Commission state aid inquiry in Italy. Brussels fears that an Italian law, giving benefits to private investors pumping money into disaster zones, may fall foul of EU state aid legislation designed to prevent national governments giving their local businesses unfair advantages over those from other Member States.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A SOLUTION to the problem of ink corrosion, one of the most serious and persistent of those facing museum and library curators charged with the preservation of old drawings and documents, may at last be in sight.

The InkCor project, backed by museums, research institutes and universities in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Slovenia, and largely funded by the European Union’s (EU) Fifth Framework Programme for research, is developing a treatment that will at the very least stabilise the present situation and slow down the corrosion.…