Search Results for: Dutch

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE NETHERLANDS, Ireland and Belgium are facing legal action by the European Commission over their alleged failure to implement a series of utility-related European Union (EU) directives. The announcements come before Brussels’ long summer break, when member states are often sent legal notices.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A NEW process for polystyrene production that sharply reduces the use of volatile organic compounds (VOC), including pentane, is to be developed commercially by the Dutch company Nova Chemicals and the German firm Teubert Maschinenbau. Stephen Long, Nova marketing manager, said it was “too early yet” to say what kind of investment would be required by manufacturers of polystyrene foam products, which include insulation and packaging materials, drinking cups and children’s toys.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Italy, the Czech Republic and the Russian Federation have suffered particularly serious thefts from museums and other cultural sites according to figures from Interpol. In a new table published by the international police organisation Italy reports a total of 18,715 thefts – far more than any other country – of which 2,875 represented liturgical objects.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH
INSURANCE is facing a huge acceleration of new EU legislation, which will lead to additional burdens right across the industry, Gérard de La Martinière (SPELLING CORRECT), the Comité Européen des Assurances’ (CEA) new president warned in Brussels today.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the acquisition of the Dutch retail company Vendex KBB by US investment fund KKR, ruling it would not create competition problems, despite the Americans already controlling Wincor Nixdorf, a German supplier of electronic retail systems.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE DUTCH government should be censured by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for excessively restricting hazardous waste exports earmarked for energy generation in another country via incineration, an ECJ advocate general has advised. Francis Jacobs criticised a Dutch rule blocking exports if more than 20 per cent of the waste could be recovered in the Netherlands.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CELEBRATED European Union (EU) whistleblower Paul van Buitenen has been elected to the European Parliament, daring the European Commission to sack him for the criticisms he made of the EU in his election manifesto. More a book than a policy platform, van Buitenen laid into his former boss Neil Kinnock, who he has accused of erecting “hoax” accounting reforms to the much-criticised EU.…

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.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HIGH-PROFILE European Commission whistleblower Paul van Buitenen has detailed the recent series of European Union (EU) scandals and corruption cases within a manifesto, issued to promote his campaign for election to the European Parliament on June 10. Exploiting rules that allow European Commission officials to stand for the parliament and make detailed election statements, van Buitenen’s manifesto is actually a German and Dutch language book ‘In the Trenches of Brussels’.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EXEMPTIONS from mineral levies paid on phosphate and nitrogen fertilisers in the Netherlands for garden centres or glasshouses have been confirmed as breaking the European Union (EU) nitrates directive by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The Netherlands’ MINAS system is based on the assumption that glasshouse flowers and crops take up 460 kg phosphates and 800 kg nitrogen per hectare per year, “considerably higher than for outdoor crops”.…