Search Results for: Belgium

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has referred to the Belgian competition authorities six merger cases involving the sale by Flanders local authorities of gas and electricity supply services to the country’s energy giant Electrabel. The councils have been forced to offload the services to comply with Belgium’s electricity and gas liberalisation legislation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN LEGAL terms, it is a Herculean task: streamlining and reducing the thousands of pages of the European Union’s (EU) body of law, the acquis communautaire. However, the European Commission does not seem to be intimidated, after all, it proposed most of this legislation in the first place.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s research Commissioner Philippe Busquin has signalled that the European Commission is prepared to sink Brussels’ newly replenished research budgets into developing techniques for storing nuclear waste underground. After a visit to the European Underground Research Infrastructure for Disposal of nuclear waste in Clay Environment (EURIDICE), in Mol, Belgium, the Commissioner said: “A lot a progress has been made towards identifying appropriate sites and developing the necessary disposal technology for underground waste management.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved Belgian government plans to pay out Euro 3 million this year to subsidise investments in combined transport facilities for road transport services in Flanders, with the aim of reducing congestion in this crowded corner of Europe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IF accountants want to give really useful advice to their clients that applies almost anywhere in the developed world, they should tell them to get married and have kids.

That would be the most logical conclusion that could be drawn from the latest Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) publication on tax, “Taxing Wages.”…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE MOST important driver of reform in the institutions of the European Union today is the impending enlargement of the EU eastwards, to take in (Greek) Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
WITH Australia sharing the front-line in President Bush’s war against terrorism with Britain and the USA, and also having witnessed its citizens dying in last year’s Bali nightclub terror attack, it is maybe not surprising that it has been tightening its money laundering legislation, especially as regards terrorists.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IF there was ever a good example to show how the economic interests of humankind generally trump those of the environment, look no further than the Aral Sea, or rather, seas, as it is today. Once a beautiful 66,900 square km inland great lake, it has since the 1960’s shrunk to less than half this size and split in two.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is moving towards a deal with Switzerland over the payment of a withholding tax to avoid releasing information about EU citizens owning Swiss bank savings accounts. It wants to protect these clients from tax demands from their home countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A STATE aid inquiry has been formally launched by the European Commission into the benefits offered to Ryanair by its first base in mainland Europe, Brussels South Charleroi Airport, Belgium. The Commission says there is a case to answer over advantages provided by the airport, which is controlled by the Walloon regional government.…