Search Results for: Belgium

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GROUP of countries have formed a network of excellence developing expertise in the deep underground storage of radioactive waste. Coordinated by the International Atomic Energy Agency, participants include Belgium’s Hades Underground Research Facility in Mol; Canada’s Underground Research Laboratory of Lac-du-Bonnet, Manitoba; Switzerland’s Grimsel Test Site and Mont-Terri Underground Research Laboratory; Britain’s Geo-Environmental Research Centre, Cardiff; and the USA’s WIPP facility, New Mexico, the Yucca Mountain Project, Nevada, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, San Francisco.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is to spend Euro 29.25 million on schemes promoting the consumption of fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy products in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Britain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRAUD is centre stage again in European Union (EU) news, following a series of high profile scandals, for instance in Eurostat. Now OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud agency has produced an annual report showing that it is detecting more irregularities.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SEIZURES of counterfeit pharmaceuticals by customs officers of the 15 EU countries rose “significantly” in 2002 and the trend has continued so far this year, the European Commission has reported. Pharmaceuticals are not identified separately in statistics on pirated goods, but form the largest part of the “other goods” category where seizures have risen from 42 million in 2001 to 59 million in 2002.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) anti-fraud unit OLAF has told of the uncovering of a Baltic State centred cigarette smuggling ring. OLAF’s 2002-3 annual report said this May police arrested 10 people and seized millions of counterfeit cigarettes. The ring was selling fake British brands, made and packaged by an illicit tobacco production plant.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has performed a U-turn and has asked European Union (EU) ministers to extend for two years a pilot scheme allowing Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Greece to continue levying reduced VAT rates (of six per cent and eight per cent for Greece) on small services for repairing and altering household linen, and clothing.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE REFORM of the European Union’s (EU) hemp and flax fibre sector in 2000 has led to an end of growing short flax and hemp, purely to gain EU production subsidies that were previously available, a European Commission report has claimed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU)-funded project has developed a technical system to search and retrieve the increasing amount of information held in digital moving image video, still photograph or audio archives. Its coordinators say that the project will be very useful for museums and research institutes who store such material.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
POLITICAL pressure applied by the European Union (EU) on its Member States to improve the environmental performance of their water sectors is failing to achieve the desired results, according to a report from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN AGREEMENT has been negotiated between the European Commission and the United States that should create common pre-shipment clearance shipments for goods shipped between the European Union (EU) and the US. If EU ministers agree, it would tell European and American exporters to provide sufficient information about goods to allow “sophisticated targeting” of security checks, prior to shipping.…