Search Results for: European Court of Justice

BY ALAN OSBORN
WILL there come a day when a genuine European market in health care takes its place among the other landmark achievements of the European Union?

In terms of economic efficiency and the functioning of the internal market, does it make much sense for a million patients in Britain, say, to have to wait sometimes for a year or more for important operations while people in France or Luxembourg can book them for the next day and some German hospitals have barely half their beds filled?…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has run out of patience with France and Belgium over their flouting of the EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive and has decided to launch legal cases against the two countries at the European Court of Justice.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A CALL has been made at a meeting of the parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, for developing countries to be given less time to phase out the CFC substitute HCFC’s, which also damages patches of the gas in the high atmosphere.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s LIFE-Nature programme is meet half the costs of a pounds 1.65 million scheme to eradicate the American mink from the Western isles of Scotland where it is beginning to decimate important bird populations. Remaining cash will come from Scottish National Heritage and others.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has granted the Ukraine Euro 20 million to help it purchase additional fuel for electricity power plants this winter, following the closure of Chernobyl, a longstanding aim of EU diplomacy. The money follows Euro 35 million already pledged to help the Kiev government meet its post-Chernobyl energy needs.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a state aid investigation into a Euro 53.2 million Basque government grant for the construction in Bilbao of a combined-cycle electricity production plant and a re-gasification unit, which is to provide the fuel for the power station.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank has announced that it will lend Euro 150 million loan to Nueva Generadora del Sur SA for constructing a combined-cycle power plant in Cádiz province, Spain.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE PORTUGUESE government has been ordered to scrap its reduced five per cent rate of VAT on equipment designed for research into alternative forms of energy, with the European Court of Justice ruling that it contravened the EU’s Sixth VAT Directive, which attempts to harmonise the application of sales taxes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is threatening legal action against the British government, claiming that it has failed to write the updated EU drinking water directive into UK national legislation. If Whitehall does not persuade the Commission within two months that it has satisfactory plans to implement its rules, it could face a case at the European Court of Justice.…

Keith Nuthall
THE UNITED States has lifted its retaliatory 100 per cent duties on EU exports of cotton bed linen, following the solution of the years-long row with the European Union over its import procedures for Caribbean bananas. The duties had been authorised by the WTO, which had concluded that the EU had broken global trading laws by offering preferential access to its markets to Caribbean bananas.…