Search Results for: European Parliament

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced an in-depth investigation into the proposed acquisition of the textile division of the Swiss company Sulzer by Italy’s Promatech SpA, a subsidiary of Radici, the Italian leader in the weaving machines sector. The Commission said the competition authorities of a number of EU countries had requested the probe on the grounds that the deal would create or strengthen a dominant position in the sector, (potentially harming choice) and could affect cross-border trade.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IRELAND’S dominant power supplier ESB and its Norwegian partner Statoil have agreed to sell 600MW of electricity on the open market, as the price of securing competition approval for their joint venture, setting up the Synergen gas-fuelled electricity plant in Dublin.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced a partial liberalisation of the rules covering wine labelling that should allow producers of ordinary still wine some scope for the use of more descriptive terms in the future. At present ordinary wine labels can carry only officially authorised terms whereas for sparkling wines and others, other words may be used, if they are not specifically banned.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is to grant Argentina some leeway over its dismantling of controls on the export of its bovine hides and the import of finished leather, as required by a World Trade Organisation disputes panel ruling, which went against Buenos Aires.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SPANISH Presidency of the European Union has been given a mandate to negotiate a wide-ranging judicial cooperation deal with the United States that would lead to the mutual exchange of relevant data and the establishment of joint investigation teams.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Agency for Safety and Health at Work has called for project proposals tapping a Euro 4 million funding scheme to encourage higher safety and health standards in small and medium-sized businesses. The agency will provide co-financing grants of between Euro 25,000 and Euro 200,000, especially for training, providing information and spreading good practice.*Details:…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EU’S Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health has approved a European Commission plan to ban the export of all live pigs and porcine semen, ova and embryos from the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany, except districts east of the Rhine.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE BRITISH government’s decision to exempt coke, (when it is used as a chemical reductant in steel production), and some other fuels with non-energy “dual-uses” from its Climate Change Levy has been approved by the European Commission. Brussels said it was giving a go-ahead following a “revised notification” by the UK addressing the Commission’s concerns about competition and the environment.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IN an interesting recent analysis of the problems facing livestock and other food producers in Europe, the European Union agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler suggested that one way forward could be through contract farming.

Instead of producing in the traditional way for the open market, he said, producers might consider linking with retail groups or the meat processing industry and delivering precisely what was needed in terms of both quality and quantity.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is demanding that the French public coal corporation Charbonnages de France repay Euro 20 million, (Pounds 12 million), of aid granted between 1994 and 1997 to its government’s central treasury even though Brussels had originally authorised the payments.…