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BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament is preparing to strengthen the proposed European Union (EU) directive on environmental liability, which is designed to ensure that polluters pay for damage that they cause through intent or negligence.

MEP’s on the parliament’s legal affairs and internal market committee are supporting amendments that would extend the scope of this legislation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ITALIAN conservation group has teamed up with the European Space Agency to collate satellite data of water pollution, in a bid to influence national government policies on land use and urbanisation. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Italia is concerned about environmental damage being caused at overdeveloped “hot spots,” especially on the coast.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA and vodka are inseparable bedfellows but is there room for a ménage-a-trois? Its domestic market for beer is booming, while abroad both Russian immigrant communities and western European and north American drinkers are enjoying the novelty factor of a quality brew from the traditional home of vodka.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS AMERICAN and British military forces secure control of Iraq from the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein using the latest military technology, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a cautionary report confirming for the first time that depleted uranium shells can and have contaminated drinking water.…

KEITH NUTHALL
AN INITIATIVE to transform natural gas burnt off in Russia’s oil fields into electricity and consumable heat has been developed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It is granting a six year US$80 million loan to a key subsidiary of Russia’s Lukoil group – CSJC Lukoil-Perm – to help it cut gas flaring to 20 per cent by 2005, compared with 52 per cent at typical Russian oilfields.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking the unusual step of taking the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers to court to try and force it to toughen moves to criminalise environmental offences across the EU.

Ministers in January adopted an EU Decision – without referring to other European institutions – that calls on Member States to criminalise wilful and negligent pollution, but leaves flexibility on what kind of offence is made a crime and on how it should be punished.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has offered to open up the European Union’s market in environmental services to suppliers based outside the EU, as part of the ongoing Doha Development Round at the World Trade Organisation.

If its trading partners offer adequate concessions in return, Brussels is offering to remove regulatory restrictions to foreign providers of waste water, sanitation, solid and hazardous waste management, soil clean-ups, air pollution reduction and similar services.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A JOINT letter signed by more than 100 environmental groups – including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WWF and the European Environmental Bureau – has called for a “radical overhaul” of the European Union’s Euratom treaty in an ongoing review of EU institutions.…

KEITH NUTHALL
EASTERN European countries looking to join the European Union need to make efficiency improvements to their textile industries, so that they can face the challenge of membership and the impending abolition of quotas under the World Trade Organisations Agreement in Textiles and Clothing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has granted environmental approval to plans for extending the life of Germany’s Prosper Haniel Colliery, near near Bottrop in North-Rhine Westphalia, using its powers to protect the EU’s Natura 2000 conservation sites. Brussels said the potential ecological damage that may be caused by continued operations at Haniel was justified by “reasons of overriding public interest.”…