Search Results for: European Court of Justice

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has sent second warning letters to the UK and seven other EU countries for their failure to adopt an EU directive aimed at providing new car buyers with information about fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AN INTERNET marketplace for motor manufacturers and component suppliers was given a go-ahead by the European Commission today (Tuesday). Covisint, a business-to-business (B2B) electronic exchange, set up originally by Ford, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, Renault and Nissan and later joined by PSA Peugeot Citroën, is designed to provide the automotive industry with “procurement, collaborative product development and supply chain management tools.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE GERMAN government has been told that it must cut back its regional aid for the construction of a new Volkswagen car factory in Dresden to 85 per cent of the sum proposed. The revised aid of 145 million Deutschmarks, (about Pounds 47 million), is part of a total investment of DM 1,000 million for a so-called “transparent factory,” which would allow a customer to observe the final assembly of his vehicle on site.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE GERMAN travel firm Preussag has been cleared by the European

Commission to take full control of the Belgian subsidiary of the TUI

group which it had had previously shared with the Belgian firm Imobra. TUI Belgium controls the tour operator Jet Air.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THREATS of delays to the distribution of ecopoints permits, allowing hauliers to cross ecologically sensitive Austrian Alpine passes, have been lifted, with the European Commission abandoning plans to cut back allocations. The move had been opposed by the EU Council of Ministers, leading to concerns about an political stand-off.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has moved to end tax exemptions enjoyed by Schiphol airport, Amsterdam, which currently is exempt from paying Corporation Tax. Brussels has claimed that in an increasingly liberalised air market, this concession cannot be justified and is illegal state aid from the Dutch government.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EURELECTRIC has welcomed the publication of guidelines from the European Commission that encourage local and national public authorities to use EU legislation on public procurement to promote the purchase of environmentally friendly goods and services.

Importantly, said Lars Peter Svane, the federation’s head of market regulation, the Commission’s “interpretive communication” does not advise local and national governments to adapt procurement practices so that environmental good practice automatically becomes a sales condition.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE INTERNATIONAL Chamber of Commerce has warned that the proposed introduction of a law insisting that in e-commerce disputes, it is the law and courts of the consumers’ country that should prevail in any legal disputes, runs the risk of “stifling” business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions over the Internet.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FORMAL disputes proceedings at the World Trade Organisation between Chile and Peru over a new Peruvian tax regime for cigarettes have been shelved, following the striking down of the tax by the Constitutional Court of Peru.

In a ruling with no appeal, Peruvian judges backed an application by the British American Tobacco Co, which claimed that the tax “granted preferential treatment to a category of cigarettes.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has approved a new EU-wide temporary protection system to cope with an influx of refugees, such as that created by the conflicts in former Yugoslavia.

Ministers can now order that the European Refugee Fund assists Member States prepared to accept displaced persons; they would be granted certain rights to residence and work permits, appropriate information, accommodation, social assistance, health care, and education.…