Search Results for: Belgium

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE’S minimum retail price system for cigarettes is to be challenged as illegal under European Union (EU) free trading laws by the European Commission. It is taking the French government to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over the issue, claiming that the system “distorts competition and benefits only manufacturers, by safeguarding their profit margins.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is being pushed by 13 of its 27 member states for postponement of a rule that says for beef cattle to be labelled organic, they must not be tethered. Under the existing regulation EEC/2092/91 on organic production of agricultural products, organic labelled beef must be from untethered cattle from 2010.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BEEF production in the European Union (EU) is likely to fall in the years to 2013 the European Commission is predicting, because of subsidy cuts under common agricultural policy (CAP) reform and the shrinking size of EU dairy herds.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank is planning to lend Euro 400 million to a “leading international” Belgium-based pharmaceutical company that also makes plastics and chemicals. The bank said the money would help fund the company’s current Euro 1 billion three-year spending plan covering its “R&D related activities and investments in the pharmaceuticals sector.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DISEASE is maybe the seafood industry’s worst nightmare. Whole stocks, natural or farmed, can be wiped out overnight. And, with globalisation meaning disease is ever more likely to be transported by international shipping, cargo planes, chilled train wagons and lorries, it is increasingly important seafood businesses monitor disease outbreaks abroad, to protect themselves and their sticks against exposure.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE STEEPNESS in the decline of British commercial fishing catches from 1995 until 2005 has been highlighted in a new report from European Union (EU) statistical agency Eurostat. It shows that for the north-east Atlantic, North Sea and the Baltic, total British commercial catches fell from 905,678 tonnes in 1995 to 658,802 in 2005, a fall of 28%.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
POLITICAL battle lines have been drawn within the European Union’s (EU) executive body over whether minimum excise duties paid on diesel should be imposed on motorists across the 27 nation bloc. The European Commission’s Laszlo Kovacs, who is the Commissioner responsible for tax policy, wants to hike tax levels to Euro 359 per 1,000 litres by 2012 and up to Euros 380 per 1,000 litres by 2014.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is catching up with the United States in innovation, a European Commission-financed statistical report has claimed, although the US still has many significant advantages. This year’s European Innovation Scoreboard (2006) concludes: “The innovation gap between the EU [minus new members Bulgaria and Romania] and Japan, and in particular with the US is decreasing.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) Joint Research Centre (JRC) is opening three new reference laboratories this month (March 17) to monitor reliable testing of contaminated food items and animal feed. The new laboratories, at Geel, in Belgium, will test for heavy metals, mycotoxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), all key environmental health concerns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union-funded project has brought pharmaceutical producing plants one step closer to reality, by creating Arabidopsis plants whose seeds contain high levels of a more complex antibody than has been grown before. Belgium’s Flemish Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) developed the seeds, whose antibody closely resembles a human equivalent protecting cells against Hepatitis A.…