Search Results for: Finland

Accountants share responsibility with banks to direct their small-and-medium-sized enterprise (SME) clients towards sources of finance, a Brussels conference has been told. Rebecca McNeil, head of SME lending at Barclays, said at a July 13 Brussels conference on ‘Capital Markets Union: delivering new opportunities for SMEs through venture capital’, declared: “We all have the duty of care, banks, accountants … to signpost SMEs to sources of finance.” …

THE EUROPEAN Commission has accused six European Union (EU) member states of failing to detect enough fraud in EU spending programmes where their governments have a significant management role. In its latest annual report on the ‘Protection of the European Union’s financial interests – Fight against fraud 2015’, the Commission said Austria, Britain and Finland had reported “a very low number of fraudulent irregularities, in particular in relation to the amount of frauds allocated to them” for  EU agricultural spending.…

Europe in 2016 has been witness to significant milestones passed in deployment of new, full-scale demonstration and commercial tidal stream and wave energy projects.

This is encouraging for the European Union (EU), which wants clean, renewable ‘ocean energy’ to provide a tenth of its power by mid-century.…

Finland is always different from its neighbours across the Baltic. Not Scandinavian, but still Nordic, Finland’s personal care product market has been experiencing hard times, as the country of 5.5 million people sees its economy seesaw between contraction and mild grow (-0.7% – +0.5%) in the last three years.…

AS the UK and the European Union (EU) digest the result of the June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU, all options are under consideration. However, short of an unexpected collapse of the movement towards Brexit, reformed future EU-UK relations are likely to complicate existing civil aviation arrangements within Europe.…

LARGE European Union (EU) energy companies and their major customers are now required to undertake energy audits under the EU’s energy efficiency directive (directive 2012/27/EU). They were supposed to have started assessing their energy usage and output by last December (2015) and must now complete such a study every four years.…

THE EUROPEAN nonwovens industry has been pushing ahead, maintaining consistent growth above increases in GDP for the whole economy, increasing its international collaboration, and the successfully exploring new markets. And while it is rarely prudent to make anything more than short-term predictions about cost and tariff problems, such difficulties faced by the European nonwovens sector seem have been pushed into the background. …

THE UNITED States Trade Representative (USTR) has highlighted its continuing concern about intellectual property rights violations in the pharma sector, citing claims that 20% of medicines sold in India are fakes.

In its annual ‘Special 301 Report’, the USTR said it notes “its particular concern with the proliferation of counterfeit pharmaceuticals that are manufactured, sold, and distributed in trading partners such as Brazil, China, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Peru, and Russia.”…

THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced that it will propose a ‘services passport’ system by December 31, designed to simplify administrative procedures for service providers, such as accountants, auditors and bookkeepers, who want to expand to foreign member states. EU internal market, industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska said: “The cross-border provision of services in the EU is underdeveloped, in particular in the area of business services – such as accounting…” The passport system would give accountants more information, boosting legal certainty and clarity about relevant professional rules in another member state.…

A COST of maintaining nuclear generation capacity of between 95 GWe and 105GWe in the European Union (EU) until 2050 and beyond will cost between EUR350 and EUR450 billion over the next 35 years, the European Commission has concluded. (That is between USD398 billion and USD511 billion at current exchange rates).…