Search Results for: Dutch

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commissioner has broken a Brussels taboo akin to the Pope calling for quickie divorces and free contraception, he has called on the European Commission to propose fewer regulations. Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch internal market Commissioner told a Netherlands newspaper NRC Handelsblad that tougher safeguards should be written into the new European Union (EU) constitution to curb his own institution’s “tendency to over regulate”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ACQUISITION of Greek tobacco company Papastratos by the Dutch subsidiary of Philip Morris has been approved by the European Commission, which can concluded that the deal is not anti-competitive, even in Greece. Even though Brussels accepted Philip Morris would become the national market leader as a result, its concerns were eased by the fact that its existing brands are not in the same price segment as Papastratos’s lines, such as Assos and President.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CURRENT European Commission leadership, under Italy’s Romano Prodi, was supposed to be the clean-hands team, ridding the institution of the corruption and mismanagement that thrived under his predecessor Jacques Santer. The ongoing Eurostat scandal is undermining that reputation.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT is an odd and depressing fact that employees who expose corruption, negligence and other malpractices in their work-place usually end up more reviled and outcast than those actually responsible for the wrong-doing in the first place. The institutions of the European Union offer excellent case studies in this regard.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE NUMBER of fish in the North Sea has increased but the average size of them has got smaller according to a study by the Institute for Fisheries Research of the Netherlands. This does not mean that fish of a particular species have shrunk in size but rather that there are now relatively fewer large fish species and a greater number of fish smaller than 30 cm, such as sprats and whitebait.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is providing Euro 850,000 to fund a study into whether the use of mobile phones causes deafness. The GUARD project, which involves teams from seven countries including the UK, will report in December. No scientific evidence yet exists to suggest mobile phones affect hearing but this will be the first extensive study on humans.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A SOLUTION to the problem of ink corrosion, one of the most serious and persistent of those facing museum and library curators charged with the preservation of old drawings and documents, may at last be in sight.

The InkCor project, backed by museums, research institutes and universities in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Slovenia, and largely funded by the European Union’s (EU) Fifth Framework Programme for research, is developing a treatment that will at the very least stabilise the present situation and slow down the corrosion.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HOPES that the shrinking of the world’s ozone hole might lead to its disappearance altogether have been shown to be premature. Satellite data from the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute has shown this year’s ozone hole was nearly as large as in 2000, after it shrank by 40 per cent and even split in two during 2002.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and PHILIP FINE

EUROPEAN Union consumers have a "reasonable level" of confidence in making online financial transactions, although concerns are more intense in southern Europe. According to European Commission figures, on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 representing absolute confidence), on average EU citizens rate their feelings at 7.08.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has this week (Mon22/10) launched the results of a programme of studies into the health problems caused by indoor pollutants, with paints and coatings named as prime sources. Releasing the reports at the opening of the 13th annual conference of the International Society of Exposure Analysis, at Stresa, Italy, the centre said its data revealed “insights into potential causes of acute indoor symptoms such as allergies, asthma, mucous irritation, headaches and tiredness.”…