Search Results for: France

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRODUCERS of wine in Belarus can heave a sigh of relief; if they import wine must from France to ferment, they can still brand it as French wine, under a global rule of origin proposed by a special World Trade Organisation committee.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RESTRICTIONS imposed by the French government on personal imports of standard and homeopathic medicines via the post, from other European Union Member States, are to be challenged at the European Court of Justice. The European Commission is bringing a case against Paris, claiming that the rules “constitute a disproportionate obstacle to free movement of medicinal products in the internal (EU) market.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MINISTERS of the 15 European Union countries have reached agreement on the Trans-European Energy Networks directive. The ministers have essentially supported the Commission proposal of last year and Brussels officials predicted that the European Parliament will do likewise later this year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Fund has agreed to invest Euro 25 million in “Merlin Biosciences III,” a pan-European scheme investing on infant companies that develop human healthcare products or allied technologies. Merlin Biosciences III will exclusively focus on biosciences, with particular attention to post-genomics, cell therapy, computational approaches to biosciences, bionics, nano-technology and system biology.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE DECLINE in the European Union’s use and production of coal over the past 50 years has been documented in a detailed paper by EU statistical agency Eurostat to mark the end of the European Coal and Steel Community.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission is investigating whether the French government has oversubsidised its aviation sector since last year’s September 11 attacks. Brussels had approved grants of Euro 54.9 million to cover additional costs created by the disaster’s four-day disruption to air traffic, but says France also spent the money on costs arising after flights were resumed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE LEGALITY within the European Union of strict alcohol advertising laws such as France’s Loi Evin is in doubt because of an unlikely case at the European Court of Justice involving Newcastle United Football Club. The team is fighting legal action brought by Bacardi-Martini and Cellier des Dauphins, who claim they lost money when Newcastle programmed its revolving touchline hoardings to display their advertisements for swift 1-2 second intervals.…

BY MARK ROWE
THERE is clearly something wrong with a law that allows a rare snake from Costa Rica to be sold in a church hall or for a reptile to be kept in a garage on a housing estate. But Britain’s animal welfare laws are, by the common agreement of just about every interested party, out-dated, confusing and, crucially, can actually cause more harm than good to animals.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
FIVE YEARS since it was first proposed, the End-of-Life (ELV) Vehicle Directive has just about made it to the statute books of a handful of EU member states. A directive both controversial and complex, it was maybe surprising, if a little disappointing, that the deadline of April 21, 2002 for transposition went by without a single EU country passing legislation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has underlined its optimism about European beef production, predicting in its report on “Prospects for Agricultural Markets: 2002-2009 that it was set to return to “more normal” levels. The Commission says that this will result from increased prices and the end of livestock destruction schemes by March 2002 (except in the UK).…