Search Results for: European Union

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has raised concerns about the financial viability of the Galileo global positioning project, passing a critical motion calling on Brussels to “ensure sufficient private sector participation during each step of the project” and guarantee “the financial consequences of a lack of participation by the private sector should not be passed on to the EU or national budgets.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed that Euro 440 million be set aside from the proposed EU’s 6th Framework Research Programme, to fund research into subject areas not yet identified, but which will become technological priorities in the future.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A REVIEW of European safety laws designed to prevent industrial explosions – such as that which recently ripped through the Atofina fertiliser plant in Toulouse, France, killing 29 people – is to be launched by a specialist EU committee.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN Union countries will have to ensure that at least two per cent of their transport fuel supplies are in the form of bio-fuels – made from sugar beet, cereals, maize and rape-seed – by 2005, under a European Commission directive to be proposed very shortly, said Franz Fischler, agriculture Commissioner.…

Keith Nuthall
A GERMAN fraudster has fled the European Union after investigators unmasked his certificate of origin scam involving Malaysian textile products, mostly denim jeans. Acting as an importer, he fraudulently exploited preferential trade regimes for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Lesotho, by claiming that its Malaysian products were from these countries, losing EU coffers at least Euro 4.5 million in duty.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN ministers have reached “political agreement” on a proposed directive designed to harmonise the EU’s widely different national rules covering the sale of food supplements sold in special doses, in pills, capsules and sachets, such as orange vitamin C tablets.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HOLIDAYS and pregnancy leave are a serious business, both for the employees who take them and the employers who pay for them. Unfortunately for personnel departments who might want a little more flexibility over whether they should shell out or not, recent cases at the European Court of Justice have underlined the right of EU citizens to take paid leave, rather than erode them.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE TERRORIST attacks in the USA have increased the urgency felt in Brussels to decrease the dependency of the European Union for its energy needs on Middle East oil, with EU research Commissioner Philippe Busquin saying that studies into renewable energy sources should have greater priority as a result.…

Keith Nuthall
A STREAMLINED system for removing faulty non-food items from retailers and service providers across the European Union, where goods have been shown to be a risk to consumers, is to be set up, following the agreement of reforms to the EU general product safety directive.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Space Agency is to launch the world’s first giant space telescope in 2007. Its Herschel Space Observatory will command a primary mirror 3.5 metres in diameter, allowing, said the European Commission, the faintest objects to be observed.…