Search Results for: Belgium

BY KEITH NUTHALL
POLITICAL and judicial pressure is being applied to Belgium to ensure it complies with European legislation opposing “tacit approvals” of pollution. Belgian law allows some companies and public organisations to pollute if they apply for permission and receive no reply from regulators.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission wants to scrap the experiment allowing shoe and leather repairers in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to charge lower rates to their customers. Its aim was to promote labour intensive industries such as shoe repairing, but following an analysis of the pilot project, the Commission has concluded that “the reduced rate had very little, if any, impact on prices or job creation.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking Austria, Belgium, Greece and Italy to the European Court of Justice over their alleged failure to implement a 1999 directive on minimum welfare standards for laying hens.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A COMPREHENSIVE deal over third party access to gas pipelines has been agreed between German joint venture BEB and the European Commission, leading to Brussels closing its competition investigation into the company’s refusal to allow Norway’s Marathon to pump gas into its infrastructure.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is formally threatening the British government with legal action at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over its alleged failure to properly implement the European Union (EU) directive on the incineration of waste. Brussels says that Britain has only “partially” implemented the legislation, which imposes operational and technical requirements for waste incinerators and co-incineration plants, setting specific emission limits regarding their pollution.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Austria and Finland to the European Court of Justice for failing to adopt an older (and looser) directive on GM food. This includes rules on post-marketing monitoring, public information, plus labelling and traceability.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
NOBODY likes nuclear waste but nobody has yet thought up a universally-acceptable way of disposing of it. This is as true in Europe as anywhere else. It may be fair to say, however, that some European countries have gone further than the rest of the world in drawing conclusions about the future of nuclear energy as a result of the problems caused by radioactive waste.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
UNILATERAL action by the Belgian government to ban the night-time landing and take-off of outdated aircraft using hush-kit noise reduction mufflers is being challenged by the European Commission. It says that Belgium should impose noise restrictions on aircraft in a way that is harmonised with the rest of the EU, under the terms of a new air noise directive, due to come in force on July 1.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ITALY and Spain are living outside their means when it comes to fresh water abstraction, according to a new water report from the European Environment Agency (EEA). It brands these large European Union countries as being “water stressed,” exploiting more than 20 per cent of their annual fresh water supplies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN countries dominate a list of states most dependent on nuclear power, according to figures released by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Lithuania is the country consuming most nuclear power, with 80 per cent of its energy supplies coming from nuclear reactors, with France second at 78 per cent and Slovakia third at 65.4 per cent.…