Search Results for: Belgium

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission is buying a fleet of bicycles, to encourage Brussels’ Eurocrats to stop driving to work and between meetings. Cycle paths, parking spots and changing rooms will be installed for pedalling officials. And the Commission is offering from 2007 to pay for half a train/tram/bus pass for any of its 22,000 staff willing to forgo coveted access to the institution’s car parks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

MANY champagne-swigging Brussels Eurocrats are accustomed to taxis, first-class air travel and even chauffeurs, so environment-inspired European Commission plans to buy a fleet of bicycles for its staff may come as a shock. Cycle paths and parking spots will be installed to help nattily dressed officials pedal between meetings in Brussels swanky Léopold quarter, hopefully not in the rain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Commission conference designed to ease the damage caused by bankruptcy has heard how most European Union (EU) countries are already reforming their insolvency laws. Speaking at a Commission conference on ‘Insolvency and Fresh Start’ in Brussels, 120 legal experts from 24 countries were told last year 140,000 corporate insolvencies in the old 15-member EU, risked 1.5 million jobs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN INTERNATIONAL Chamber of Commerce survey has concluded that most developed countries are responding to high oil process by improving energy efficiency. Especially good performers included Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium. The US had also made progress "to a lesser degree".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AS Alexander Lukashenko exploits his contested mandate as president of Belarus to crush his country’s opposition, the European Union and the Nordic Council of Ministers have pledged Euro 2.78 million to help a Belarusian university in exile survive.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

LEVIS has won a partial victory at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over a bid to protect as a trademark ‘gull’ shape stitching on its rear jeans pockets. ECJ advocate general Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colome has advised national judges should allow such protection given proof consumers associated a clothing design with a particular brand.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission’s Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) and Belgium’s Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) have agreed to cooperate on food and feed safety research, collating data, helping to plan EU food safety and quality programmes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

GERMANY, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Sweden, have pressed the European Commission to reduce European Union (EU) sugar production quotas by 10% for 2006/7, because of a pan-EU 2 million sugar surplus generated in 2005/6. Germany said current intervention stocks should continue to be stored to protect prices.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WHEN European Union (EU) consumers think of food, more associate it with "taste" – 31%, than with "pleasure" – 29%, "hunger" – 27%, "health" – 19% and "necessity" – 15%. As usual with culturally diverse Europe, however, there were wide national variations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission and the Belgian Federal Food Chain Security Agency are investigating the contamination of animal feed with poisonous dioxins, some of which have been exported to Germany and the Netherlands. Hundreds of farms have been closed in the alert in all three countries, which was caused by defective filters at Belgian chemical producer Tessenderlo Chemie.…