Search Results for: Belgium

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 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 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
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
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.…

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.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A RULING on car registration legislation at the European Court of Justice could remove red tape demands on European fleet managers whose companies’ employ workers living in more than one European Union country. Judges have stated national governments cannot insist a worker’s company car be registered in their home country, rather than where a company and its fleet management is based.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Paris
FRENCH tobacconists held a one-day national strike on Monday (20-10) in protest of the recent tax hikes on tobacco products. Some 88 per cent of the country’s 34,000 state-run tobacco shops closed their doors or refused to sell cigarettes because of a recent 20 per cent price increase, the second hike this year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A PLANNED reform of the European Union’s (EU) Euro 12.5 million-per-year hop subsidy regime could push hop producers towards promoting speciality varieties, of interest to brewers seeking an edge in flavour and bitterness, a National Hop Association of England spokesman has said.…