Search Results for: European Parliament

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed that the Spanish government should be authorised to levy a special 25 per cent tax on imports of tobacco into the Canary Islands, to help protect its dwindling tobacco industry; a Brussels report claimed that between 1985 and 2000, the sector shed 67 per cent of its jobs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BELGIAN government has been put on legal notice by the European Commission that it could be heavily fined by the European Court of Justice for its failure to abide by rulings made in 1999 opposing Belgium’s cargo sharing shipping deals with five African countries, namely Togo, Mali, Senegal, the Ivory Coast and its former colony, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s plan to establish the satellite-based global positioning system Galileo has been dealt a heavy – and potentially fatal – blow by the EU Council of Ministers (transport), which has blocked finance for the crucial development stage of the programme.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched legal action against Austria, Greece, Finland, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Sweden for failing to comply with a commitment under EU law to monitor average emissions of CO2 from new passenger cars.…

From Alan Osborn
The fashionable term in setting up international energy projects these days is “flexible mechanisms” of which the best known is the trade in emission reductions, or carbon credits. The Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, which guides implementation of the Convention, laid down emission reduction targets for industrialised countries but allowed flexibility to meet them through the purchase of emission credits from poorer countries.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
YOU might not think it to look at them, but behind the heavy wrought iron Victorian doorlocks in the Houses of Parliament is what claims to be the world’s most advanced electronic access control system. This is the American-made Intellikey, sold in the UK and Europe by the company’s Milton Keynes-based subsidiary.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s plan to establish the satellite-based global positioning system Galileo has been dealt a heavy – and potentially fatal – blow by the EU Council of Ministers (transport), which has blocked finance for the crucial development stage of the programme.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A POLITICAL lifeline has been thrown to the EU’s Euro 3.6 billion, (Pounds 2.2 billion), Galileo project to set up a satellite-based global positioning system for European countries. After EU transport ministers appeared to have doomed the scheme by refusing some Euro 450 million, (Pounds 275 million), of development financing earlier this month, EU government leaders, meeting at the week-end in Belgium, said Galileo was of “strategic importance” adding that a financing decision should be taken by March next year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Intellectual Property Organisation’s digital copyright treaty is to come into force on March 6, next year, after Gabon became the 30th country to ratify its provisions, the minimum number required to make it international law.

This convention safeguards the rights of authors whose works are published on the Internet and in other digital media, protecting literary and artistic works, including online books, computer programs, music, art, and films.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE USE of azocolourants for dyeing leather and textile goods is to be banned throughout the European Union following acceptance by EU ministers of scientific evidence that they present a cancer risk. Some EU countries already ban the nitrogen-based chemicals and the European Commission wants to harmonise the situation in the interests of free trade.…