Search Results for: Belgium

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
CYCLE repairers in the UK will have to wait another 12 months before finding out if the European Commission intends to expand a reduced rate of VAT scheme that is currently enjoyed by only a handful of Member States.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE DISCOVERY this summer of the hormone MPA in treacle or glucose syrup used for pig feed in the Netherlands, originated in Ireland and were sold on via Belgium because of poor implementation of EU pharmaceutical waste laws and the carelessness of feed producers, the European Commission has claimed.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union’s drinks industry is one of the continent’s key earners according to a report from EU statistical agency Eurostat, which says its productivity is much higher than that of the food processing sector.

The top performing country in the latest pan-EU figures available (1999) in the drinks industry was France, at Euro 103,700 generated in terms of value added by the sector per person in employment.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GOVERNMENTS and international organisations have highlighted tobacco smuggling as one of the largest illegal drains on their tax revenues. An international conference has brought law enforcement professionals together with health officials to fight this problem. Keith Nuthall reports.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has made it clear that it will not countenance the creation of certain special tax regimes within the European Union for so-called coordination centres, that provide services including banking, marketing, insurance and logistics to companies within an international group.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
EASTERN European countries that built nuclear power plants while under the communist system never thought they would face deadlines for closing them down as a prerequisite for joining the European Union. Neither had they built in the next stage – decommissioning – into the prices charged for electricity in the way that the western European nuclear plant operators had done from the start.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MINISTERS of the 15 European Union countries have reached agreement on the Trans-European Energy Networks directive. The ministers have essentially supported the Commission proposal of last year and Brussels officials predicted that the European Parliament will do likewise later this year.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
NOT many items of legislation from Brussels have provoked quite such anger among farmers over the years as the nitrates directive, which seeks to protect water from nitrate pollution caused by the application of organic and inorganic fertilisers to agricultural land.…

BY MARK ROWE
CAN the European Union’s single skies plan become a reality inside 30 months? It is a topical subject, with the recent crash over Germany underlining the arguments in favour and against the project, which should lead to planes flying above 28,000 feet being guided and controlled by unified units of air traffic controllers, replacing the current piecemeal system of national flight monitoring and guidance.…

BY ALAN OSBORN AND PHILIP FINE

THE EUROPEAN Commission’s competition authority has cleared the purchase

by General Motors of a series of production and sales outlets of the South

Korean car manufacturer Daewoo.

GM is to acquire some of Daewoo’s production facilities for passenger cars

and light commercial vehicles in Korea and Vietnam together with sales

subsidiaries in Austria, the Benelux region, (Belgium, Netherlands and

Luxembourg), France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.…