Search Results for: German

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved Germany’s controversial Euro 647 million state aid injection to TotalFina Elf subsidiary Mitteldeutsche Erdöl Raffinerie for constructing the Leuna 2000 refinery in Saxony-Anhalt. Brussels had re-examined the project and has now cleared all aid, including Euro 61.4 million, which had been blocked pending the decision.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has ordered a reduction in the state aid proposed by the German government to help the company Capro Schwedt to build a new plant for the production of caprolactam, the main input material for the production of synthetic fibres.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GERMAN company Rapid Eye AG is developing a new type of geographical survey satellite, specialising in agricultural data, with EU-approved Euro 37 million German government grants.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) Council of Ministers for competitiveness has failed to agree legal proposals for setting up a so-called ‘Community Patent’ that would give inventors the option of obtaining a single patent legally valid throughout the EU.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has come down on the side of the European Commission in a dispute with Germany, (which has been supported by Britain in this case), over the payment of VAT when petrol suppliers redeem money-off vouchers they had distributed to retailers through a middle-man.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) Council of Ministers is under pressure to agree proposals to set up a so-called ‘Community Patent’ that would give inventors the option of obtaining a single patent legally valid throughout the EU. Germany and Portugal are objecting to wording in the proposed texts and have succeeded in blocking the initiative, angering EU internal market commissioner Frits Bolkestein who said the Commission “cannot accept that the proposed central and specialised EU jurisdiction should be watered down.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
GERMANY is being threatened with legal action by the European Commission over the award of sewage water treatment and gas and electricity supply contracts by the city of Jever, Friesland, north Germany. Brussels says that the contracts were agreed without open tendering procedures legally required to ensure competition in public procurement.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A GERMAN manufacturer of brewery equipment has joined with a Luxembourg beer brewer to commercialise a technique that they claim can save 55 per cent of the energy required for boiling wort, a major process in beer production.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CONCEPT of nation building is not new. Powerful governments have for centuries sought to create pliant political administrations which would do their bidding, without being directly under their control. It is, after all, in noone’s interest for a territory to descent into chaos.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ATTEMPT by German garden equipment group Viking-Umwelttechnik to have a symbol composed of two rectangles – one green, one grey – registered as an exclusive European Union (EU) trademark has been lost.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that consumers would have difficulty associating the shapes with the company’s products, which include garden choppers and shredders; rotary cultivators; lawn mowers; front mowers; ride-on mowers; lawn aerators; lawn trimmers; hedge clippers; sweeping machines; motor saws; and brush cutters.…