Search Results for: Austria

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A COOLANT leak at a Slovenia nuclear power plant sparked diplomatic concern after the European Commission initially told European Union (EU) member states about the incident, but added the message was just a drill.

The accident happed at Kr?ko…

By Alan Osborn

The 27 EU member states will have to speed up their educational progress if they are to meet a range of self-imposed targets deemed necessary if the Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs is to be successful by 2010.…

By Keith Nuthall

WE all know about Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. These social utility websites allow us all to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, exchange messages, post pictures and play silly games – such as throwing a digital sheep at someone or giving them a pixellated hellraiser cocktail.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has made progress in a series of legal actions against European Union (EU) utilities alleging unfair trading. Notably, Brussels has launched anti-trust inquiries involving Germany’s E.ON (and E.ON Ruhrgas) plus Gaz de France (GDF), alleging illegal trust agreements to avoid supplying gas to each other’s home market following the liberalisation of the EU markets.…

BY MARK ROWE

NUCLEAR energy production costs a lot of money and so it makes some economic sense for smaller countries interested in this climate-change friendly power supply to combine forces on major projects. So it is in eastern Europe, where in February 2007, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland provisionally agreed to build a new nuclear plant at Lithuania’s existing Ignalina site, initially with 3,200 MWe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN ALLIANCE of Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden have effectively blocked moves to create a European Public Prosecutor position. The European Commission has dropped draft proposals establishing the post within Eurojust, the European Union’s (EU) network of prosecution agencies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE ITALIAN Carabinieri police force and European Union (EU) anti-fraud office OLAF have smashed a fraud ring involving the claiming of agricultural subsidies for more then 900,000 kilograms of non-existent tobacco. OLAF claims that at least Euro 3 million had been illegally siphoned from EU common agricultural policy budgets in this scam, which has led to 80 individuals being placed under formal judicial investigation by the Italian public prosecutor’s office (Procura della Repubblica) in Perugia, north of Rome.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WITH Dmitry Medvedev becoming Russia’s new president, the European Union (EU) has been pushing ahead to secure oil and gas supplies independent of Moscow. EU energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and external relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner met with Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey diplomats and officials to discuss gas pipeline links.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A NEW pilot initiative is aiming to make European Union (EU) national electronic public procurement systems compatible, to ease cross-border online tendering. Although EU law insists that public procurement contracts are made available to suppliers from foreign member states, making such bids can involve difficult and unfamiliar paperwork.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Pesticides Action Network (PAN) pressure group has claimed independent tests have revealed wines sold in the European Union (EU) may contain residues of 10 potentially harmful pesticides. It examined 40 EU-purchased bottles from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Austria, Germany, Italy, Portugal, South Africa, Australia and Chile – 34 conventional and six organic: the conventional wines contained 148 pesticide residues in total, having one to 10 pesticides each – an average-per-bottle exceeding four.…