Search Results for: Czech Republic

BY KEITH NUTHALL and ALAN OSBORN
ACCESS rights to drive across ecologically-sensitive Alpine passes in Switzerland and Austria – plus to Bulgaria and Romania – are being granted to hauliers from the 10 eastern and southern European countries joining the European Union (EU) in May.…

BY EDWARD PETERS
DEPENDING on who you ask, Taiwan is either a renegade province or to all intents and purposes an independent nation, albeit one that currently lacks full international recognition. To suggest that it could be a fully functioning country in its own right to anyone in Beijing – the capital of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – is tantamount to treason.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ASSOCIATION of British Insurers (ABI) is pressing the UK Government to maintain its raised level of spending on flood defences, as it works towards its next public spending round announcement in the summer. Following the spate of disastrous floods in 2000, Whitehall in 2002 increased its annual spending on the problem by Pounds 150 million.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has raised fears that citizens of some countries joining the European Union (EU) in May could defy EU regulations because they may not all have been translated into their national language. News service Malta Media has reported concern from officials working for EU enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheugen that the translation of the 85,000 page ‘acquis communautaire’ was behind schedule, especially in small countries such as Malta and Estonia, where few specialist translators are available.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN has been given a relatively clean bill of health in the latest Transparency International corruption rankings, being viewed as joint-11th least-corrupt country in the world, sharing its billing with Canada and Luxembourg. Finland was the most honest place in which to do business said the pressure group’s survey, followed by Iceland and the Denmark plus New Zealand at joint third.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A CZECH company found to have broken promises not to dump cut-priced malleable cast iron tube or pipe fittings on the European Union (EU) market should have its exemption from existing 26.1 per cent anti-dumping duties removed, proposed the European Commission.…

BY ALAN OSBORN and MARK ROWE
THE LIBERALISATION of electricity and gas supplies in the European Union (EU) was finally agreed in 2003 and will come into full effect this year for business customers and in 2007 for households and all others.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation has boasted that 100 countries have now signed its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, although only nine countries have yet to ratify the treaty. Of these, the world’s major developed economies are conspicuously absent, the line up including Fiji, India, Malta, Mongolia, New Zealand, Norway, Palau, Seychelles and Sri Lanka.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Union is to pay for a new software system, computers and other information technology equipment to improve the functioning of the judiciary in the former Yugoslavian republic of Macedonia. The EU aid – worth in total Euro 1.9 million – follows a report detailing serious inadequacies in the legal system in Macedonia, including the fact that judges there had to deal with about 800 cases annually compared to a maximum of 300 in the EU itself.…

BY MARK ROWE
ONE of Russia’s leading health and beauty retailers, Pharmacy Chain 36.6, has acquired 73 regional outlets in the southern (Russian Federation) Republic of Bashkortostan. The purchases involve the takeover by 36.6 of the local Leko pharmacy chain in the republic, including 30 stores in the capital city of Ufa and stores in 17 other cities across Bashkortostan.…