Search Results for: Belgium

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A PRACTICAL and regional initiative to remove barriers in trading electricity between neighbouring European Union (EU) countries has been launched by the European Regulators’ Group for Electricity and Gas (ERGEG). It is grouping states’ regulators and utilities together to focus on regulatory and technical difficulties impeding cross-border sales of electricity for countries sharing frontiers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) member states have been authorised to levy until January 2011 low rates of VAT on clothing and household linen repair services. The decision continues for four years an experiment that has thus far been renewed annually and which has been exploited by Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands – who have charged 6% VAT on these services and – Greece, which has charged 8%.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRUSSELS’ usually well-paid Eurocrats are accustomed to taxis, first-class air travel and even chauffeurs, so environment-inspired European Commission plans to buy bicycles for its 22,000 staff may come as a shock. Cycle paths and parking spots will be installed, with the Commission investing in changing rooms, so that pedalling officials are not sweaty and smelly when they attend high powered meetings.…

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 ALAN OSBORN

Volvo Trucks, one of the world’s largest truck manufacturers, is to make its assembly plant in Ghent, Belgium, entirely free of carbon dioxide starting 2007. The company said three wind-power generating stations would be built along with a new biofuel production facility to supply electricity and heating "without making any net contribution to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere".…

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

A SHARP decline observed in European butterfly populations by an international study has raised parallel concerns about worsening environmental conditions in general. The report published in the Journal of Insect Conservation says that butterflies "are very good candidates to build biodiversity indicators".…

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 ALAN OSBORN

FACT BOX

Population of Cyprus: 793,100

Number of students enrolled at university: 5,000 (see text)

Percentage of university students who are Cypriots: 90%

Percentage of Cypriots (excluding mature students) attending university in Cyprus or other countries: 80%

INTERVIEW

OUT of every ten young people who apply for a place at the University of Cyprus, only three actually gets admitted.…

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.…