Search Results for: France

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SERIES of exemptions from the European Union’s (EU) new energy taxation directive have been proposed by the European Commission for the eastern and southern European countries joining the EU in May (barring Cyprus).

They would be added to the already long list of exemptions negotiated by existing Member States that prompted EU internal market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein to liken the legislation to “Gruyere cheese”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is investigating a proposed deal effectively allying the European Union’s (EU) two companies enriching uranium for the nuclear industry. Brussels fears the purchase by France’s Areva of a 50 per cent stake in the Enrichment Technology Company from German-Dutch-British Urenco could cut competition and raise nuclear fuel prices, given enrichment represents about 35 per cent of fuel production costs and seven per cent for nuclear electricity generally.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
1. THE stage has been set for one of the fiercest internal EU legal battles in recent years following a decision by the European Commission to take the Union’s member states to court over their refusal to punish France and Germany for breaching the euro zone rules last November.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A CONSORTIUM of major gas players has received a significant US$372 million loan from the European Investment Bank to construct the first phase of a new major liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Idku, Egypt, which will be able to export supplies to Europe from nearby Alexandria.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has confirmed that France will be allowed to continue levying low rates of duty in Corsica until December 2009, when the concession is supposed to be scrapped.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has an overwhelmingly positive trade balance for sparkling wines, exporting product worth Euro 917.4 million in 2002, compared with Euro 45 million in imports. France accounted for 56 per cent of extra-EU exports, followed by Italy (12 per cent) and Spain (8 per cent), according to figures released by Eurostat.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ANTI-NUCLEAR campaigners in France are warning that the European Union’s (EU) preferred site for the ITER fusion reactor could be vulnerable to earthquakes. The French ‘Network for the Abolition of Nuclear Energy’ has warned of an active geological fault seven kilometres from the proposed site at Cadarache, in Provence, where historical records tell of past significant earth tremors.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE REFORM of the European Union’s (EU) hemp and flax fibre sector in 2000 has led to an end of growing short flax and hemp, purely to gain EU production subsidies that were previously available, a European Commission report has claimed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has welcomed the decision by the French government to scrap its unlimited state guarantee of France’s electricity giant EdF. The move follows intense political pressure from the Commission’s competition directorate general, which has fought a long running battle with Paris to prise open the French power market.…

Keith Nuthall
AIR France and Italy’s Alitalia have offered to release landing and take off slots to competing airlines, mainly at airports in Paris and Milan, to secure European Commission approval of a proposed alliance. The release of slots would, they claimed, boost choice and price competition.…