Search Results for: European Union

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EU ministers have given the European Commission a mandate to negotiate further liberalisation of trade between the existing EU and eastern and southern European countries wanting to become Member States.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission today (Tuesday) formally proposed that the European Union ratifies the Rotterdam Convention procedure regulating the shipping of hazardous chemicals in international trade, and at the same time proposed that the EU goes further by covering a wider range of chemicals than contained in the Convention.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a new directive on the authorisation of traditional herbal medicines, providing a simplified registration procedure for products in use for at least 30 years. Although the quality thresholds match those for standard medicines, the usual compulsory tests on safety and efficacy can be replaced by an assessment of information about their use in the past three decades, even if some data was gathered outside the European Union.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission may threaten legal action against national governments in the European Union, after 12 out of 16 Member States failed to meet the January 16 deadline for implementing the EU e-commerce directive. A statement from Brussels has revealed that only Luxembourg, Austria and Germany approved laws based on the directive by that date.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released a report on “Investment in the Community (EU) coal and steel industries” that tracks the sector’s performance in the European Union during 1999. The report predicts that “all the coal-consuming sectors except the steel industry see their requirements declining over the coming years,” faced with the competition of natural gas.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission today (Wednesday) announced new plans for the distribution and sale of cars in the EU that will loosen the ties between manufacturers and dealers allowing greater competition and lower prices for consumers.

The new rules, which cannot be blocked by member governments or the European Parliament because the Commission has sole responsibility for competition policy, will come into force in October after a consultation process with the industry.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has given a new warning to EU Member States against agreeing individual bilateral air transport deals with non-EU countries. It says “open skies” deals with the US give the Americans “considerable operational opportunities in the European market” but have no equivalent value for European airlines in the US.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed that airport slots unused by airlines because of the drop in traffic following September 11 should be earmarked for their use in the coming summer and winter, (2002-3), to allow operators sufficient flexibility to deal with the ongoing slump in demand.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has struck a deal with Morocco allowing it to import around 168,000 tonnes of tomatoes into the EU until next May.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SIGNIFICANT trend towards the consolidation in the European Union’s insurance sector has been highlighted by a report from the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat, which has released detailed data about 1999.

In that year, said the study, the number of EU insurance businesses decreased by 8.4 per cent between 1996 and 1999, with a particularly sharp decline in Britain, where numbers fell by 23.7 per cent.…