Search Results for: Belgium

Global steel transformation giant Bekaert is awaiting a European Commission decision on whether its plans to acquire Pirelli Tyre’s steel tyre cord business can go ahead. Bekaert expects a ruling this month (July) on the USD350 million deal to expand the company’s share of the global market from Brussels’ competition directorate general.…

HELPING AND ADVISING EUROPEAN CONSUMERS SHOPPING AND TRAVELLING ABROAD

WHEN CAN ECC-NET OFFICES HELP YOU?

• Air travel

So much can go wrong: flights can be delayed or cancelled; luggage can be lost or damaged; and hidden fees can be charged.…

EUROPE’S plastics manufacturers association PlasticsEurope has called on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to maintain its current total daily intake (TDI) maximum for bisphenol A (BPA), saying it will be justified by upcoming studies. 

The call was made by PlasticsEurope Dieter Beyer, representing its polycarbonate/bisphenol A Group, at an EFSA meeting on the topic, in Brussels.…

Japan has been delivering sufficient concessions in negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU) to ensure the talks continue, EU trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht has signalled to wardsauto.

Since the launch of talks last March (2013), he said Japan had agreed to adopt “the large majority of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) regulations as such.”…

THREE dimensional (3D) technology – while well established in many other industrial sectors like aerospace, architecture and industrial design – is still relatively new to the fashion industry. Analysts are describing it as ‘disruptive’ technology, capable of transforming the way apparel companies do business, from prototyping and pattern making using 3D models to the creation of 3D digital catalogues and a range of customer centric services based on 3D body scanning and sizing.…

FINLAND’S Stallhagen brewery is recreating French beer found aboard an 1840s shipwreck in the Baltic Sea in 2010 (along with 145 champagne bottles). The company will sell 2,000 0.6-litre bottles of Stallhagen Historic Beer 1842 (approx abv 4.5%) brewed by a specialist team at Hogeschool Gent, Belgium, who developed a recipe based on five French beer bottles found on the wreck, which includes a wild yeast ingredient.…

REPRESENTATIVES from Europe’s sugar industry want sugar to be excluded from the current free trade negotiations between the United States and the European Union (EU). Speaking at an EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) briefing in Brussels, Oscar Ruiz de Imaña – the deputy director general of the European Association of Sugar Producers (CEFS), warned of the uncertainties in the sugar markets on both sides of the Atlantic.…

Concerns are growing about the potential impact of reforms to Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG – Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz) on the country’s cogeneration sector. On April 8, (2014) the German federal government proposed a bill amending the EEG, following the tabling of an initial plan about potential reforms in January.…

AUSTRIA

The location of ECC Austria in central Vienna means many consumers drop by to receive advice or lodge complaints in person with the ECC’s five staff members. A top priority in 2013 was increasing public awareness about e-commerce fraud; a brochure aimed at combatting the problem was published and more than 600,000 were distributed throughout Austria.…

ALTHOUGH two-thirds of vaccine research and development (R&D) globally is carried out by European firms, manufacturers in China, India and Brazil are becoming increasingly muscular and “moving from dependency to self-sufficiency” experts at a two-day conference in Brussels on vaccine research heard last week.…