Search Results for: Austria

Keith Nuthall
AUSTRIA and Ireland have been warned by the European Commission that they could face action in the European Court of Justice for failure to introduce legislation covering roadworthiness tests for diesel motor vehicles.

The EU directive concerned is 1999/52/EC, which concerns emissions from diesel engine vehicles and in particular with “vehicle preconditioning with a view to avoiding damage to the engine,” said the Commission.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
WILL there come a day when a genuine European market in health care takes its place among the other landmark achievements of the European Union?

In terms of economic efficiency and the functioning of the internal market, does it make much sense for a million patients in Britain, say, to have to wait sometimes for a year or more for important operations while people in France or Luxembourg can book them for the next day and some German hospitals have barely half their beds filled?…

KEITH NUTHALL
A CONSORTIUM of key European Union players in the solar energy market has launched an ambitious scheme to install 15 million square meters of solar collectors in Europe by 2004, a project for which it hopes to get support from the European Commission.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has been active recently, using its unique powers within international law to bring EU Member States to heel for failing to implement European legislation promoting health and safety.

Unlike any other international court, the ECJ has the power to fine sovereign states, which ignore its rulings.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN Union government ministers have agreed that from July 2002 a ban on the feeding of restaurant food waste to pigs will apply throughout the 15 EU countries, as part of a directive on the control of classical swine fever.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
BRITAIN has been formally threatened with legal action by the European Commission over its failure to introduce national legislation fully implementing the EU’s Hazardous Waste Directive. Brussels said that the UK was at fault over its legal definition of hazardous waste – which did not match that of the EU – and added that the ban on the mixing of hazardous wastes, outlined in the directive, “has not been fully implemented in Gibraltar or Northern Ireland.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has allowed Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain to pay special income aid worth a total of some Euro 418 million, (about Pounds 250 million), to beef producers suffering losses between November 2000 and June 2001 because of the BSE crisis.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a reform of rules on cross-border taxation within the EU, which would give each Member State the responsibility of circulating information about interest paid within their territories to foreign EU nationals. This would have to be provided to tax administrations in the home EU countries of these expatriates.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SIMPLICITY is not one the virtues that is readily associated with the institutions of the European Union, so it is refreshing to note that the European Parliament has recently taken a straightforward step to boost its accountability to the citizens of the continent that it serves.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is threatening legal action against the British government, claiming that it has failed to write the updated EU drinking water directive into UK national legislation. If Whitehall does not persuade the Commission within two months that it has satisfactory plans to implement its rules, it could face a case at the European Court of Justice.…