Search Results for: European Court of Justice

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission will shortly propose legislation significantly expanding the use of bio-fuel by introducing “compulsory market shares for bio-ethanol and bio-diesel in the transport sector,” the European agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, said this week.

Commission officials told Commercial Motor that legislation would ensure that by 2005 at least two per cent of transport fuel throughout the EU came from bio-fuel, (produced from sugar beet, cereals, maize and rapeseed oil), rising gradually to 20 per cent by 2020.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released its priority projects for investment under its ongoing trans-European networks programme; the list includes a range of projects designed to improve rail links, in a bid to encourage freight operators to abandon road transport.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is consulting the electronics industry on an ecological performance directive, which would force electrical companies to minimise the impact of their processes on the environment.

Brussels’ draft law on the impact of electrical and electronic equipment would order companies to carry out an assessment of their manufacturing systems and would also tell them to “strive to prevent pollution” in the design, distribution and operation of a product.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has appealed for proposals for EU grants, which would fund technological initiatives boosting the clean and efficient use of solid fuels, notably the use of clean coal technologies by power plants to limit emissions such as carbon dioxide.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A REVIEW of European safety laws designed to prevent industrial explosions – such as that which recently ripped through the Atofina fertiliser plant in Toulouse, France, killing 29 people – is to be launched by a specialist EU committee.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has moved to impose 11.3 per cent definitive anti-dumping duties on imports from Japan of internal gear hubs for bicycles, notably those from Shimano Inc. The formal proposal for approval by EU ministers follows an earlier decision to erect provisional anti-dumping duties.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTERNATIONAL pharmaceuticals companies will find it easier to export to China in the future, following the approval of its membership of the World Trade Organisation, a decision that was achieved by China making a wide range of concessions that will liberalise its commercial laws.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A EUROPEAN Commission report has tried to give local authorities an insight into how environmental policy can impact on the job market, dismissing claims that tighter rules destroy jobs. Instead, says the report, the effect is broadly neutral with expenditure on waste management generating direct employment in specialised waste management firms and other companies.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A STUDY ordered by the European Commission finds that the imposition of environment-friendly waste management regulations can, contrary to longstanding opinion in industry, have a positive effect on employment. According to the report, jobs are created straight away in the waste management industry and while these are offset by potential employment losses in manufacturing companies, the net effect is a small but significant improvement.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LAWYERS will be able to warn their clients that they are about to tip-off law enforcement authorities over concerns that they are handling dirty money, according to the final shape of long debated reforms to the EU money-laundering directive.…