Search Results for: Dutch

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the insurance business being one of the most internationally sensitive of global economic sectors, it came as no surprise that the tragic events of September 11 had a dramatic effect on its fortunes, impacting seriously on the work of its regulators, especially in the European Union.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has acted upon its public warning that it was considering an extension of the Seveso II industrial safety directive, as result of the fireworks explosion in Enschede, the Netherlands, and the cyanide spill at the Baia Mare mine in Romania.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNET legal advice service, providing information about European Union legislation affecting e-commerce, has been launched. The site, eLexPortal.com, will provide updated information on EU and national laws and regulations on the subject; it is free of charge, and allows users to e-mail queries to its online experts.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A STUDY of 8,000 primary schools in the Netherlands has revealed “dirty, cramped and unsafe” conditions that have affected the morale of teaching staff and pupils. The report, drawn up by the Dutch research institute TNO on behalf of the country’s Ministry of Education, concludes that the schools themselves are partly to blame by diverting money from health and safety budgets to new educational programmes but says there is also a shortage of funding necessary for schools to comply with the Dutch Occupational Health and Safety and Building Acts.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared a Dutch waste disposal system for car wrecks, following an investigation into whether it was illegal state aid. It is a voluntary agreement among companies, later declared binding by the Dutch government. It has set a levy for 2001-2003 of Euro 45 per car registered in the Netherlands, paid by car producers and importers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HOLIDAYS and pregnancy leave are a serious business, both for the employees who take them and the employers who pay for them. Unfortunately for personnel departments who might want a little more flexibility over whether they should shell out or not, recent cases at the European Court of Justice have underlined the right of EU citizens to take paid leave, rather than erode them.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEP’s are sticking to their guns in a political battle with European Union ministers over whether there should be EU legislation laying down noise limits or particular forms of transport operations across the continent. The parliament’s environment committee is resisting a decision by the European Union Council of Ministers to reject amendments that would have strengthened a planned noise directive, making it include commitments to set specific and binding EU noise limits for road vehicles, trains, rail tracks and aircraft.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development is to lend Viking River Cruises US$15 million to acquire three cruise ships to ply the Danube and Volga rivers. The Scandinavian/Dutch owned company is the world’s largest river cruise line with a fleet of 30 ships operating in European and Russian waterways.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GERMAN chemicals giant BASF has been frustrated in its bid to secure a new supplementary protection certificate for its longstanding pesticide ingredient chloridazon, which would have erected fresh legal barriers for rivals wanting to use the chemical.

The company had applied for the certificate at the Dutch Industrial Property Office, on the basis of a comparatively new market approval, secured for a chloridazon product in 1987, (the first had been issued in 1967).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has finally given EU Member States the green light to help their electricity producers meet expensive ‘stranded costs’ that were incurred before the power market was liberalised in the late 1990’s, although Eurelectric has attacked Brussels for acting too slowly.…