Search Results for: European Parliament

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
FINNISH steel companies Rautaruukki and Outokumpu are set to benefit from European Commission funding of Euro 600,000 granted to support the distribution of steel across Europe using alternatives to road transport.

The funded transport project is part of the EU’s PACT programme, which aims to move containers and similar units away from roads to rail, sea and inland waterways.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN EU satellite monitoring project, that will probably be funded under the oncoming European Sixth Framework Programme for research, is to play a key role in ensuring future forest conservation. It will check estimates of tree cover and other environmental data, the European Commission has said.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN Union ministers have been asked to approve a wine trade deal struck between the European Commission and Croatia. If it is accepted, it will lead to the mutual liberalisation of import and export quotas, the lowering of tariffs and the joint recognition of protected names, such as geographic indications.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union ministers have been formally asked to approve writing the new Protocol on Water and Heath to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes into EU law. The treaty commits signatories to ensuring adequate drinking water and sanitation, while preventing waterborne pollution and disease.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRACTICAL advice on how local authorities can cope with the growing threats posed by floods and droughts have been included in a new report from the European Environment Agency, which claims that flooding is “the most common and most costly type of natural disaster in Europe.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LOCAL authorities will have to use common legal terminology in public procurement procedures, matching that used in every Member State of the European Union, if a proposed regulation from the European Commission is agreed by EU ministers. Brussels wants its Common Procurement Vocabulary – currently just one of several systems in use – to be made mandatory for contracts and tender documents.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared a planned Spanish publishing joint venture between Germany’s Bertelsmann and Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA, of Italy, combining all the book publishing divisions and imprints in Spain and Latin America of Random House and Mondadori.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has decided to come out fighting in its row with Member States over the liberalisation of energy markets. Calling on EU Ministers and the European Parliament to “rapidly adopt” its March 2001 proposals to completely liberalise gas and electricity markets by 2005, the Commission threatened to use exceptional powers granted to it under EU treaties to pass directives and decisions on market fairness, bypassing opposition from national governments and MEPs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has re-launched its civil case against Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, teaming up from the start with Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg, to scupper any further defence that the EU had no substantive complaint against the tobacco firms.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has re-launched its civil case against Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, teaming up from the start with Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg, to scupper any further defence that the EU had no substantive complaint against the tobacco firms.…