Search Results for: Climate change

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SITTING in a comfortable flybe. seat, maybe flying home from a colourful continental European destination, you will already know how Britain’s European Union (EU) membership improves your life.

Those simple passport control procedures at continental airports – if there were are any at all – are a direct result of the demolition of national borders by Brussels.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE RECENT sharp rise in the price of petrol and petro-chemicals has inevitably threatened prices and profit margins in the paint manufacturing industry but the effect is far from straightforward according to leading figures in the industry. This is because paint and coatings manufacturers do not buy oil directly, but products further down the chain such as vinyl acetate monomer and others where impact of higher crude oil prices tends to be muted.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s much-heralded financial reforms will not be fully realised for at least another five years, possibly later, according to Jules Muis, the Commission’s former chief internal auditor.

“Although progress has been made, the Commission has a long way to go before it can present an image of being a world class administrative machine,” he told Accountancy Age during a brief return to the Belgian capital.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is has given Belgium two months in which to say how it will prevent Flanders’ regional government from imposing distribution charges on imports of electricity from renewable energy resources, while not levying supplies from Flemish ‘green’ producers, that is directly placed on the national grid.…

KEITH NUTHALL
GERMANY has moved away from an aggressive approach towards cutting industrial greenhouse gas pollution, watering down planned commitments within a national allocation plan under the European Union’s (EU) emission trading scheme. Brokered by German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the new agreement earmarks 503 million tonnes of carbon dioxide credits annually to its industry (including power generators) between 2005 and 2007, a minor reduction (0.4 per cent) to current emissions (505 million tonnes).…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) organisation tasked with reviving the war-damaged south-eastern Balkans has released a plan to move Macedonia’s wine industry from a bulk producer of cheap wine towards a higher-end sector, tapping western export markets. The country has a wine-making tradition, still exhibits a (former) communist command economy inspired indifference to quality.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
UTILITIES enjoying market privileges who will in the future continue to be covered by European Union (EU) public procurement rules when buying in goods and services have been asked to comment on European Commission plans to reform the policing of this open tendering system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Food & Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has warned that the number of domesticated livestock breeds worldwide is declining sharply, with 1,350 of the roughly 6,300 FAO registered breeds threatened by extinction or already extinct. The problem has been discussed by a special FAO meeting of national coordinators on animal genetic resources, which is developing a global plan to halt their disappearance.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SEEN in the context of the past decade, the entry of 10 new member states to the European Union (EU) which took place on May 1 has proved nothing like the disaster for the nuclear industry that was once feared.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
PERSONNEL managers may well consider the European Court of Justice (ECJ) a somewhat austere body, constantly engaged in arcane institutional and corporate matters. Think again. It can well be argued that the ECJ has had a more direct impact on the lives and work of the European Union’s 380 million citizens, including of course those in Britain, than any other single organisation.…