Search Results for: France

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is threatening Britain and France with massive daily recurring fines – which could exceed Euro 20,000 – over their alleged failure to comply with orders of the European Court of Justice to abide by EU water laws.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SUCCESSFUL trial of electronic tags for livestock has been announced by the European Commission, which has inspired a proposed regulation that would create a unified system for accurately monitoring farm animals across the European Union.

Brussels officials have unveiled in Italy the results of the IDEA project (Electronic IDentification of Animals), a one million animal trial spanning France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is to open a formal investigation into the provision of unlimited financial guarantees by the French government to its national electricity company Electricité de France (EdF). Brussels called last year for a phasing out of the guarantees because, it said, they amounted to illegal state aid.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SUCCESSFUL trial of electronic tags for livestock has been announced by the European Commission, which has inspired a proposed regulation that would create a unified system for accurately monitoring farm animals across the European Union (EU).

Brussels officials have unveiled in Italy the results of the IDEA project (Electronic IDentification of Animals), a one million animal trial spanning France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s funding institutions are increasingly financially assisting the former USSR’s oil industry. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is lending US$80 million loan to a key subsidiary of Russia’s Lukoil group – CSJC Lukoil-Perm – to help it cut gas flaring to 20 per cent by 2005, compared with 52 per cent at typical Russian oilfields.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
FRANCE, Italy, Spain and Portugal are blocking a move by the European Commission to allow the import into the EU of Australian wine flavoured by the addition of oak chips. This is a faster and cheaper process than the traditional method of ageing wine in oak barrels.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME four years after they began, negotiations for a deal over a geographical indication register for traditionally made wines and spirits are entering a decisive phase at the World Trade Organisation. The talks have taken so long because there is a fundamental difference in approach between new world producers led by the US who want such a register to amount to no more than a kind of voluntary data-base and the Europeans who see it as a means of ensuring world-wide legal protection for traditional appellations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH accountants are the second most lightly regulated in the European Union (EU), with their Danish colleagues having the most freedom according to a European Commission-funded survey, promoting liberalisation in Europe’s professions. Belgium, Austria and Germany – where heavy regulation is often favoured – have the union’s most tightly restricted accountancy professions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN and Greece have escaped from being taken to the European Court of Justice by the European Commission over allegations that they had failed to implement the European Union’s (EU) Fourth Motor Insurance Directive.

The European Commission reported that the two governments had responded to a legal final warning letter by writing the directive into their national laws, having missed a deadline of July 20 last year.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s competition directorate-general has decided to close its probe into the alleged refusal by Dutch gas company Gasunie to grant access to its pipeline network to the Norwegian subsidiary of US oil and gas producer Marathon in the 1990’s.…