Search Results for: France

BY ALAN OSBORN

OF all the European Union’s (EU) flagship energy projects, maybe none is more central to the goal of ensuring security of supply and none more fraught with political and technical complexity than the proposed Nabucco pipeline designed to bring natural gas from the Caspian region, the Middle East and Egypt into Austria and then on to consumers in western Europe.…

By Mark Godfrey in Beijing

No country has added nuclear power like energy-hungry China. Neighbouring North Korea had more nuclear power capacity than China in 2000 (as did Taiwan). But by 2010, according to the US government-affiliated Energy Information Administration, China will have bypassed both countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WHILE tuberculosis rates remain low in western and central Europe, an increase in drug resistant TB in eastern Europe is raising concern amongst European Union (EU) experts. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has released figures showing that 18.6% of Lithuania’s 2,228 TB cases in 2006 were multiple-drug resistant; 15% of Estonia’s 399 cases were of this deadly strain; as were 14.7% of Latvia’s 1,109 cases.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission is monitoring concerns that Italian mozzarella cheese has been contaminated with dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs, amidst claims that the refuse crisis in Naples’ Campania region generated the responsible pollutants. Brussels was poised to ban the sale of the white melting cheese, but was mollified by a safety recall by Italian health authorities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) Court of First Instance has rejected a plea by France water giant Suez to register as an EU-wide trademark the slogan – ‘Delivering the essentials of life’ – for its various goods and services.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SUBSIDIES will continue to be paid to European Union (EU) producers of flax and hemp fibre crops, the EU Council of Ministers has decided. Indeed, ministers have decided to increase the aid paid to long flax fibre producers, raising it from the current Euro 160 per tonne to Euro 200 per tonne from the 2009/10 marketing year onwards.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AFTER years of resistance from France, Italy and other European Union (EU) member states favouring privacy on a range of issues, all recipients of EU agricultural and rural development subsidies will be published from April 30, 2009. Under a new European Commission rule, the full name, municipality and, where available, postal code of recipients will be published, said the Commission, in "clear, harmonised, nationally-managed websites with a search tool".…

BY MARK ROWE

RUSSIA’S new-found belligerence and confidence is not confined to the political and military sphere: in recent years Russia has adopted an aggressive, take-it-or-leave it stance when it comes to fish, seafood and other food products.

The country has imposed a number of bans on fish products from its European neighbours, including salmon and other fresh fish from Norway, fishmeal, frozen fish and canned smoked sprats from Poland and a range of fish products from Latvia.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A NEW fishing agreement has been negotiated between the European Commission and Mauritania, slashing maximum catch allowances, after an earlier deal was poorly exploited by European Union (EU) fishermen. Under the replacement agreement – which should run from this August to July 2012 – catch quotas for EU vessels in Mauritania waters will fall by 25% for cephalopods; by between 10% and 50% for demersal species (mainly shrimp and hake); and by 43% for small pelagic fish.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE SLOVENIAN government has tabled compromise proposals to break the current political logjam at the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers over gas supply unbundling. As current EU president, Slovenia has suggested for instance that some joint ownership of energy producing and transmission utilities could occur if there were "additional safeguards" preventing conflicts of interest, and guaranteeing the "structural independence of decision making" by distribution operators.…