Search Results for: Belgium

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
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.…

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 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 DEIRDRE MASON, in London
A WORLDWIDE standard for automotive safety glazing may only be a few months away, now that suppliers have agreed on the content and wording.

The new draft standard was finalized at a January conference in Brussels under the umbrella of CLEPA (the European Association of Automotive Suppliers), with representatives from the US, Japan, Canada, Belgium, France and Germany taking part.…

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 UNITED Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is pushing signatories to its new Protocol on Water and Health to its Convention on Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes to agree detailed targets on improving European water quality.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BALTIC States are the European Union’s (EU) boom-region for research spending increases, according to the latest R&D figures from EU statistical agency Eurostat, which show Britain’s performance as relatively static. Annual average growth rates in real terms research spending from 2001 to 2005 ranged from +18% in Latvia, +17% in Estonia, and +11% in Lithuania, (+15% in Cyprus).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BALTIC States are the European Union’s (EU) boom-region for research spending increases, according to the latest R&D figures from EU statistical agency Eurostat, which show Britain’s performance as relatively static. Annual average growth rates in real terms research spending from 2001 to 2005 ranged from +18% in Latvia, +17% in Estonia, and +11% in Lithuania, (+15% in Cyprus).…