Search Results for: Belgium

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BELGIAN government has lost an attempt to charge tobacco manufacturers and shippers VAT on cigarettes stolen before they can be shipped from a warehouse to a distributor or retailer. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that under the European Union’s (EU) sixth VAT directive, EU member states cannot charge VAT on stolen tobacco goods.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INSURANCE industry is being asked to comment on European Commission plans to table a European Union (EU) ‘floods directive’ telling member states to limit the potential risks posed by floods and plan for dealing with any that arise.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed the abolition of registration taxes that it says impede the transfer of vehicles to the 16 European Union (EU) member states that impose them. Britain is not among the countries concerned, but they include Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Austria and Poland.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT’S coming up to 18 months since the French tobacco industry was hit by the last of a triple whammy of excise tax increases over a single year and it seems a reasonable moment to take stock. The three tax increases – 10% in January 2003, 20% in November 2003 and 10% in January 2004 – were part of a health drive by Jacques Chirac’s government, worried by the continued popularity of smoking among young people among other things.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW European Commission report has raised concerns that while efforts are being made by European Union (EU) institutions, not enough done to raise people in work out of poverty. It says that while “low pay is obviously an important risk factor…being low-skilled and remaining in unstable and often part-time employment, can also lead to poverty”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission will spend Euro 26.1 million on 26 programmes promoting the sale within the EU of organic food products, olive oil, milk and cheese, ham, fruit and vegetables, plus some drinks products. There will be matching funding from participating countries Britain, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Finland, Hungary, Poland and Cyprus.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INSURANCE companies cannot always rely on a key European legal convention to ensure a case is heard in its home jurisdiction, when fighting the claim of a foreign beneficiary about damages incurred abroad, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
WHILE the consumption of paint, ink and colourings in Belgium is, like that in most other European countries, best described as “stable”, the country’s production industry is eying opportunities to relocate in cheaper regions, such as eastern Europe.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
ACCORDING to global consumption figures, Israel is the world capital of teenage soft drink demand, with hot weather combined with a competitive market to create something of a utopia for drinks companies. An international survey of soft drinks consumption published by the Economist by 15 year olds of both sexes suggests that Israel has the world’s biggest teenage consumers of carbonated and still drinks, colas, sodas, juices and the like on a per capita basis.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE LONGEST collectively agreed working hours in the European Union’s (EU) retail sectors are found in richer western European countries, as well as poorer new member states from eastern and southern Europe, a new study has shown. And Britain, usually attacked for having the longest working hours in western Europe, actually has below-average collectively bargained time at work in the retail sector, noted the European Industrial Relations Observatory, looking at 2004 figures.…