Search Results for: European Parliament

BY KEITH NUTHALL
COMPETITION officials are examining a proposed German joint-venture merging the downstream and petrochemical operations of Deutsche Shell GmbH and its rival RWE-DEA. The German Competition Authority has been given the right to adjudicate on the downstream elements by the European Commission, which is itself handling the deal’s petrochemical implications.…

KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union ministers have been asked to punish five Polish pallet producers who the European Commission alleges have failed to abide by promises not to dump cheap products on the EU market, thereby escaping anti-dumping duties of up to 10.6 per cent agreed established in 1997.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A MINIMUM level of state aid payments to the European Union coal industry would survive until 2010, and probably beyond, under a new subsidy regime proposed by the European Commission that would recognise the need of the EU to maintain its own indigenous energy production.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON AND KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Space Agency is embarking of the development of a raft of new challenging projects, all of which are open to British involvement, notably a mission to Mercury – which could use the services of the University of Leicester Space Instrumentation Group.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is preparing a new EU corporate take-over directive by setting up a high level group of company law experts and asking for preliminary recommendations by the end of the year. Brussels will propose a new directive to replace legislation that was scrapped in July when the European Parliament failed to approve it.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has imposed definitive anti-dumping duties on imports into the EU of certain steel and iron cables from the Czech Republic, Russia, Turkey and Thailand.

Its decision – by the written procedure used during Brussels’ summer break – follows an inquiry, which “confirmed” concerns that the sale of cut-priced cables from these countries was harming EU producers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced that the proposed European Food Authority is to play a central role in the evaluation of pesticide safety, in a speed up the current slow pace by which the EU is checking the toxicity of active ingredients in plant protection products.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE TIMING of concessions that can be achieved at the World Trade Organisation’s agricultural round, sweeping away the high tariffs, import quotas, production subsidies and export credits that make the working lives of every agricultural exporter more of a struggle, are likely to be set in the next three months.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH restaurateurs and hoteliers could be forced to pay regular fees to record companies for piping music from radio broadcasts into their premises, if the European Commission wins a legal case against the British government.

It has asked the European Court of Justice to order the UK to scrap the existing system, where no royalty fees are paid to record companies when hoteliers and restaurateurs play radio background music, free-of-charge to customers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has taken clear steps towards the adoption of a law, which would compel the freezing of assets in any of its member countries because of a court order issued in any other EU state. This regulation covers “the transfer of property to be used as evidence, for the purpose of confiscation or for restitution to the victim of an offence.”…