Search Results for: European Parliament

BY KEITH NUTHALL
REFORMS to the European Union’s Community Tobacco Fund have been tabled by the European Commission, which wants to earmark half the money earned from deductions from tobacco growing premiums spent on anti-smoking campaigns and research. The Commission says Euro 18 and 27 million will be made available by respective two and three per cent deductions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has infuriated the European Commission by unanimously authorising the Greek government to pay Euro 90 million in additional state aid to its cotton producers in 2001-2. Sweden, Denmark and Germany abstained on the vote by the EU agriculture council.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GROUND-BREAKING scheme to promote renewable energy in rural Wales has received a European award, in a competition designed to promote good practice and push the European Union towards meeting its target of generating 12 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have been asked to reduce total allowable catch (TAC) quotas for EU fishermen trawling for redfish and flatfish in Faroe Islands waters, because of an earlier decision to block Faroese fishermen from taking blue whiting from EU waters.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has rejected a bid by Britain’s Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco to annul European Union Directive 2001/37/EC on the composition and designation of cigarettes on the grounds that its commercial restrictions were illegally based on freedom of trade powers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a formal review of compensation offered by the French government to its air industry following last year’s September 11 attacks, claiming that Paris had extended the aid beyond that which had been authorised by Brussels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have been asked to suspend import tariffs on a number of textile products, because of concern that demand is outstripping supply in the EU. The removal of duties would be indefinite, although the European Commission will inevitably review these tariff breaks within a year; assuming they are approved, they will come into force on New Year’s Day.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has approved the writing into European law of the international Kimberly Process on certifying the origin of diamonds. Its aim is to prevent the sale of so-called blood diamonds, which are tainted by being trafficked from mines in African civil war areas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has speeded up its establishment of a European Maritime Safety Agency, which has been delayed because of disagreements within the EU Council of Ministers over the seat of its secretariat. As a result, the Commission has convened the inaugural meeting of the agency’s administrative board in its own Brussels offices, without waiting for a decision on where the organisation will be houses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WHILE the number of companies in the European Union’s (EU) insurance sector has been dwindling, the amount of business that it has been writing collectively has been booming, according to the latest comparative figures from EU statistical agency Eurostat.…