Search Results for: European Union

BY ALAN OSBORN
A EUROPEAN Commission report has tried to give local authorities an insight into how environmental policy can impact on the job market, dismissing claims that tighter rules destroy jobs. Instead, says the report, the effect is broadly neutral with expenditure on waste management generating direct employment in specialised waste management firms and other companies.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE LONG struggle to agree EU rules on working time is set to be extended well into next year and maybe beyond, with the European Commission proposing the replacement of the existing planned directive, even before it has been agreed by a conciliation committee representing Member States and the European Parliament.…

KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH hauliers may not in future find themselves at such a competitive disadvantage with eastern European competitors regarding the commercial transport of animals, because of a planned updating to a Council of Europe welfare convention.

Its commitments apply to countries both outside and within the European Union, where hauliers already have to comply with expensive rules on trailer standards, journey times, rest periods and the watering and feeding of livestock.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission will shortly propose legislation significantly expanding the use of bio-fuel by introducing “compulsory market shares for bio-ethanol and bio-diesel in the transport sector,” the European agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, said this week.

Commission officials told Commercial Motor that legislation would ensure that by 2005 at least two per cent of transport fuel throughout the EU came from bio-fuel, (produced from sugar beet, cereals, maize and rapeseed oil), rising gradually to 20 per cent by 2020.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union ministers have been asked to approve an updated list of technology whose export should be tightly restricted because of concerns that in the wrong hands, they could be used to develop military and terrorist weapons. European Commission officials have been reviewing the EU’s list of so-called dual-use goods for more than a year and Brussels now formally proposed its new catalogue of controlled exports.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN Union competition Commissioner Mario Monti has announced that Brussels is to clamp down on special tax regimes affecting financial services in 11 Member States, which it claims are probably so lax, they constitute illegal state aid payments that could unfairly favour local companies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released its priority projects for investment under its ongoing trans-European networks programme; the list includes a range of projects designed to improve rail links, in a bid to encourage freight operators to abandon road transport.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is planning new trade measures to help Pakistani exports, specifically targeting clothing and textiles, which account for three-quarters of the country’s sales to the EU. In a move linked to helping Pakistan deal with the current war on its Afghan neighbour, the plan is to remove all tariffs on clothing and to increase quotas for Pakistani textiles and clothing by 15 per cent.…

Keith Nuthall
DETAILS of the European Commission’s plans to reduce the contrasts between tax regimes in EU Member States have been released, with Brussels publishing its policy paper “Towards an Internal Market without Tax Obstacles.”

As predicted in Accountancy Age, the Commission is aiming in the long term for the creation of a consolidated tax base for businesses operating across the EU, with the report highlighting the 30 per cent variations in national company tax rates.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME thirty years after the idea was first proposed, the creation of a European Company has become a reality. This new corporate entity will be authorised to operate throughout the 15 European Union countries under a single set of management, reporting and legal rules which will be binding throughout the EU.…