Search Results for: France

BY MARK GODFREY

IN 2011, foreign brands seem set to extend their dominance of the cosmetics and hair products market in China, one of the few sectors of the economy controlled by multinationals. Procter & Gamble (P&G), Unilever and L’Oréal dominate sales revenues here, and to extend their dominance global brands continue to acquire local brands.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

Discord has hit the usually placid calm of European Union (EU) financial watchdog, the Court of Auditors: a dissident ex-member says EU fraud and mismanagement is even worse than we think. Keith Nuthall explains.

It was something of a surprise when Dutch auditor Maarten Engwirda marked his retirement from the Luxembourg-based court with what amounted to an accounting kiss-and-tell exclusive in the Netherlands’ De Volkskrant newspaper.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has welcomed anti-counterfeiting packaging technology produced by the European Union (EU)-funded Euro EUR7.4 million SFERA project, encouraging the cosmetics sector to use its innovative systems. A Brussels note has stressed SFERA’s development of a "new laser-making system" for marking containers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) response to the swine flu epidemic has been attacked at the European Parliament as wasteful and "disproportionate". A meeting of the parliament’s public health committee has called for an EU-wide study on spending to fight the H1N1virus, in a motion noting "a striking contrast between the number of deaths associated with H1N1 influenza and the number of deaths associated with seasonal influenza…" It said "the very sizeable costs incurred in the member states and at EU level", for instance Euro EUR1.3 billion in Britain and EUR990 million in France, "as against EUR87 million in the case of seasonal influenza".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union’s meat sector will continue to lose exportsto non-EU countries over the next 10 years, creating trade deficits for all major market segments, except pigmeat, a European Commission commodity forecast to 2020 has predicted. Even for poultry – which alone of major European meat sub-sectors increased production in 2008 and 2009 – exports from the European Union will be outstripped by imports over the next 10 years.…

BY MARK ROWE and E BLAKE BERRY

GIVEN Poland’s reputation as a reliable member of the international community, it is perhaps surprising Poland was (until 2009 at least) reckoned by the European Commission and the US Department of State to have one of the EU’s poorest records for tackling money laundering.…

BY JULIAN RYALL

JAPAN is being accused of trying to write its own official asbestos testing system into an international standard, because it knows it does not work and so will get its government off the hook for asbestos exposure cases.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

WITH sales of biofuels still very much in their nascent stage and concerns rising about the environmental impact of biofuels growing, research and development into ‘second-generation’ biofuels is going ahead apace. And a key element of this work is lowering CO2 emissions from fuel by using waste alternative sources of material for conversion to biofuel.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN ‘R20’ initiative launched by outgoing California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to encourage regional governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been backed by six European sub-national administrations. These are the Paris-area Île-de-France Regional Council, Flevoland (the Netherlands), Azores (Portugal), Istria (Croatia), Alba (Romania) and Donetsk (Ukraine).…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

IT sounds like every child’s dream job – chocolate testing: something out of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But it is of course a deadly serious business – not just to ensure chocolate tastes good and is healthy – but also to comply with laws on chocolate composition.…