Search Results for: Belgium

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has sent final legal warnings to 10 European Union (EU) member governments, telling them to abide by minimum standards for the training of professional drivers working in their countries. EU directive 2003/59 imposes requirements for initial qualification and continuing training: compulsory basic training of 280 hours, and periodic training of 35 hours every five years to update knowledge and skills.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GOODS transport firms wanting to exploit full scale liberalisation of the European Union’s (EU) postal services may see swift progress this month, with the EU’s German presidency pushing reforms at the EU summit, June 21-22, in Brussels. This follows debates last week at the EU Council of Ministers, after which Germany’s economics minister Michael Glos said: “Clear progress is discernable on the path towards the liberalisation of the European postal services,” adding he was “very confident that a positive decision will be taken in the near future”.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
RESEARCHERS from VIB, the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, in Belgium, have discovered a protein that both protects human skin from sun damage and retains moisture. The protein caspase-14 is crucial in maintaining the ‘stratum corneum’, a layer of flattened dead cells that acts as a protective barrier for our skin, their research has shown.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

GOODS transport firms wanting to exploit full scale liberalisation of the European Union’s (EU) postal services may see swift progress this month, with the EU’s German presidency pushing reforms at the EU summit, June 21-22, in Brussels. This follows debates last week at the EU Council of Ministers, after which Germany’s economics minister Michael Glos said: “Clear progress is discernable on the path towards the liberalisation of the European postal services,” adding he was “very confident that a positive decision will be taken in the near future”.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

RESEARCHERS from VIB, the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, in Belgium, have discovered a protein that both protects human skin from sun damage and retains moisture. The protein caspase-14 is crucial in maintaining the ‘stratum corneum’, a layer of flattened dead cells that acts as a protective barrier for our skin, their research has shown.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTELLIGENT packaging is a buzz-concept in the plastics sector, deploying chemically sensitive polymers which can change colour when a food goes off, or is out of date, and other uses. But a European Union (EU) research project is taking a step further, developing organic light emitting device materials (OLEDs) that could actually flash and beam out messages: “Don’t drink this milk, it is sour!”…maybe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU) research project is taking intelligent packaging a step further, developing organic light emitting device materials (OLEDs) that could flash messages, such as: “Don’t drink this milk, it is sour”. The three-year GBPounds 850,000 Modelling Electroactive Conjugated Materials at the Multiscale (MODECOM) project is coordinated by the University of Bath and will investigate the molecular properties e behind polymer-based mass produced organic light emitting devices, providing information to help develop commercially-viable designs.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE FRENCH tobacco market is astir and it’s quite possible that such iconic brands as Gitanes and Gauloise, part of the Franco-Spanish Altardis group with some 30% of the French cigarette market, will no longer be independently owned by the year-end.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A LENGTHY row over European Union (EU) energy policy is shaping up following the publication in April of a detailed independent study sponsored by the European Commission of the electricity markets in six EU countries.

The study – Structure and Performance of Six European Wholesale Electricity Markets in 2003, 2004 and 2005 – was drawn up by the consultants London Economics in association with Global Energy Decisions and focuses on the electricity wholesale markets in Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and the UK excluding Northern Ireland.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Youth Manifesto on Tobacco Control was to be handed over to European Union (EU) health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou at the European Parliament this week in Strasbourg. The policy document, drawn up by EU youth organisations, calls on EU institutions and EU member states to involve young people and their representatives when drawing up anti-smoking policies and programmes.…