Search Results for: European Court of Justice

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE LOCAL Council – what are the worst images conjured up when thinking of those words?

Let me make it easy for you.

Lazy employees that take forever to process requests, generally unhelpful and bored, unfulfilling positions that can transform a new recruit full of fresh ideas and faith in the system, to the jaded staff that many of us have encountered at our local councils.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IN an attempt to stamp out smuggling and fraud, the European Commission is proposing that excise duties on popular cigarettes sold throughout the 15 EU countries should be brought much closer together. In a proposed new directive, the Commission says there should be a minimum fixed amount of excise duty of Euro 70 (about Pounds 42) per 1,000 cigarettes in the most popular price category, which would be in addition to the existing minimum excise requirement of 57% of the retail price.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN IT companies will be able to apply for grants from a budget of Euro 3.6 billion, which has been earmarked for information society research from 2002-2006, if new proposals from the European Commission for a new framework research programme, are agreed by EU ministers and the European Parliament.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
VINEYARDS in Kosovo are bearing fruits for the first time in more than a decade because of a joint regeneration programme developed from the Commission, the United Nations and the European Agency for Reconstruction.

In 1990, nearly 10,000 acres of vineyards produced high-quality wine to traditional recipes, 80 per cent of which was exported creating a thriving wine industry in the region.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Commission president Romano Prodi has identified Britain and Spain as the governments holding up progress towards the creation of the so-called single European sky and the resulting accession of the EU to Eurocontrol. In a speech to the European Parliament on the outcome of the recent EU Stockholm summit, Mr Prodi said: “As we all know, a whole series of landmark proposals is now blocked, awaiting a bilateral agreement between Spain and the United Kingdom on Gibraltar.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union Tacis programme grants are to fund much of the Euro 33.3 million contract for the construction of a radioactive waste management facility near the Chernobyl power plant that has been signed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy (represented by Energoatom, the National Nuclear Energy Generating Company) and the German contractor NUKEM Nuclear GmbH.…

Keith Nuthall
A REPORT on allegations of irregularities and fraud regarding EU subsidies paid for the production of flax in Spain, has been sent to the Spanish authorities by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF). The report, which is expected to lead to criminal proceedings, has also been sent to Michaele Schreyer, the EU budget commissioner, the European Parliament and to the European Commission’s DG agriculture.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DRAFT guidelines have been released by the European Commission, to help competition regulators decide when an Internet or telecommunications company is so large and powerful, it has to abide by special rules on the sharing of networks and on takeovers and mergers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL consensus on the taxation of digitised e-commerce products has come one step closer to reality, with the release of a detailed consultation paper on the subject by the OECD.

The importance of reaching such a deal amongst developed countries was underlined last year by an EU-US row over European plans to force American e-commerce corporations to register for VAT in Europe.…

KEITH NUTHALL
CHINA has agreed to stop its pharmaceutical manufacturers from copying medicines patented in Austria, Finland and Sweden, extending ‘administrative protection’ enjoyed by the rest of the European Union to these countries.

Beijing has been refusing to grant these rights – which are a form of patent protection – because when it agreed to stop its citizens copying European Union patented pharmaceuticals, neither Austria, Sweden nor Finland were EU members.…