Search Results for: France

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DIESEL vehicle owners are undermining the efforts of manufacturers to reduce road transport pollution in Europe, a European Environment Agency (EEA) report has claimed, by tuning engines to boost their power. The EEA thinks up to 50% of new diesel vehicles are being modified and that such changes can increase emissions, especially of harmful particles, by as much as three times.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the takeover of dominant Italian tobacco distribution company Etìnera by Altadis-owned Logistica, of Spain. Brussels concluded the deal could boost competition because Etìnera is owned by British American Tobacco, which commands a significant share of Italy’s cigarette manufacturing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WANT to sell cigarettes? Go east, young man. That might be the advice that tobacco companies could glean from the latest set of World Health Organisation (WHO) smoking figures. Using 2003 or latest available data, the WHO has collated percentage rate proportions of smoking adults (18 and over), compared with total populations of all but 56 countries: the overwhelming majority of nations.…

BY ALAN OSBORN and KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH off licences will be able to sell more bottle and can sizes for imported soft drinks and low alcohol beer under a European Commission proposal to allow European Union (EU) manufacturers to sell such drinks in all volumes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SIX wine producing countries of the European Union’s (EU) intake of new member states in May have received their first allocations of EU vineyard restructuring aid. The European Commission has earmarked the largest sum to Hungary: Euro 10 million for 2004-5, followed by Slovenia at Euro 2.9 million, Slovakia 2.8 million, Cyprus nearly 2.4 million, the Czech Republic 1.7 million and Malta Euro 171,000.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT’S not quite “back to the drawing board chaps” for sugar reform in the European Union (EU) now that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has formally ruled against the present system but some new thinking is surely needed – and quickly.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HEALTH ministers from seven European Union (EU) countries have announced a plan to boost research cooperation to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine. Meeting in Paris, ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands agreed to jointly organise studies and clinical trials to speed up discoveries, avoiding wasteful duplicate testing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PUBLIC procurement procedures are illegal if they insist cost should be local authorities’ sole consideration in selecting a contractor for certain jobs, according to a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling. It concluded that an Italian law (109 of 1994) broke EU directive 93/37/EEC by insisting that except for certain construction and management jobs “contracting authorities use only the criterion of the lowest price”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DEEP-SEA northeast Atlantic fishing quotas for vessels from the eastern European countries which joined the European Union (EU) in May, have been announced by the European Commission. Initially covering 2004, but also a base for future years, these quotas are in some cases quite substantial, despite the concern about the need to conserve the stocks of these deep water species.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE USA has lifted its ban on French foie gras and cooked meat products exports. It was imposed over food health concerns, but followed an EU ban on American chicken after this year’s US bird flu outbreak. France’s agriculture minister Herve Gaymard claiming the decision showed “the trustworthiness of the French food safety system.”…