Search Results for: Austria

BY MARK ROWE
CAN insurers help reduce risk by funding initiatives for the emergency services? Companies are increasingly looking at how they can support emergency services and, thereby, lessen the impact of insurance claims. The thinking is by helping to improve the efficiency of emergency services, the impact of natural and manmade disasters, including terrorism, can be mitigated in terms of people making insurance claims.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PLANS to create European Union (EU)-wide driving licences have received a set back, with the EU Council of Ministers failing to approve the directive that would bring them into being. The German government, supported by France, Austria, Poland and Denmark successfully blocked agreement of the proposal, which will now be pushed by the UK government, which took over the EU presidency on July 1.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels, and KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commission official has told Accountancy Age that the ‘high level tax group’ set up to consider the implications of the Marks & Spencer tax case may be just “gesture politics”, given the difficulties of making reforms to the European Union’s (EU) court system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is spending Euro 1.1 million on creating a sophisticated high-technology monitoring network for the Alps, aimed at helping local emergency services manage, reduce and mitigate the risks posed by avalanches, landslides and floods. Such natural disasters have the potential to be immensely destructive in Alpine regions, foisting heavy bills upon insurers, but the Commission’s ASSIST project is designed to reduce such physical and financial damage.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) anti-fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas has called on other cigarette manufacturers to make smuggling crackdown agreements with the EU and its member states, mirroring that already struck with Philip Morris International. Speaking at the opening of a European Parliament exhibition on cigarette smuggling, Kallas said he hoped the agreement would “serve as a model for other manufacturers who are willing to commit the necessary resources to combat illegal trade of their products and to work with us to combat that trade”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE LONGEST collectively agreed working hours in the European Union’s (EU) retail sectors are found in richer western European countries, as well as poorer new member states from eastern and southern Europe, a new study has shown. And Britain, usually attacked for having the longest working hours in western Europe, actually has below-average collectively bargained time at work in the retail sector, noted the European Industrial Relations Observatory, looking at 2004 figures.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has asked the EU Council of Ministers to outlaw five national bans on genetically modified products: Austria’s ban on genetically modified maize (MON 810) and GM maize (Bt 176), Germany and Luxembourg’s ban on Bt 176; and Greece’s block on sales of GM spring swede rape.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DIVISIONS over the EU sugar regime reforms have been clarified at a European Union (EU) Council of Ministers (agriculture) meeting. British, Danish, German, Swedish, Latvian and Maltese delegations wanted “rapid reform, to make the sector more competitive”, though concerns of ex-European colonies in the African Pacific Caribbean (ACP) bloc “should be taken into account”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DELAYS in complying with the European Union’s (EU) year 2000 directive outlawing racial discrimination across Europe, including at the workplace, have earned the Austrian government a censure by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). It said Austria had “failed to follow its legal obligations” under EU law by not implementing directive 2000/43/EC on ‘equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin’ by July 2003.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released a report detailing sales trends and environment improvements in European Union-consumed motor fuels. It shows, for instance, that the average sulphur content in petrol and diesel roughly halved between 2001 and 2003. In that year, 30.3% of diesel sold had less than 50 parts per million (ppm) of sulphur, with 24.9% less than 10ppm, (Germany and Sweden dominated consumption of this cleanest diesel, while regular diesel was most common in Austria, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain).…