Search Results for: Germany

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) protected designation of origin (PDO) system that defends hundreds of EU traditional food products from being copied outside their home region has been weakened by a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling. It stated that official consumer watchdogs have no legal duty to police these rules for imported products – only those made domestically.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

The Bologna process was launched in 1999 with great fanfare and hopes for a brave new world within European higher education, but the initiative involved a leap of faith by universities and colleges. For although it makes good sense that the 46 countries now taking part should have higher education systems sufficiently compatible to improve collaboration and course exchanges, such a limited goal was never going to be enough.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AS the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers prepares to debate proposals on unbundling Europe’s electricity and gas industries this Thursday (Feb 28), the European Commission is refusing to adopt the so-called ‘third way’ proposals backed by France and Germany.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE ANNOUNCEMENT by the UK government that it intends to build a new generation of nuclear power plants stands out, not just because of the scale of the proposals, but because it is the first such comprehensive initiative in Europe for some years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has welcomed an order made by French magistrates against two dairy executives to repay more than Euro 23 million in EU subsidies claimed for pure butter, which was actually adulterated. Jean-Pierre Boisgontier and Guy Fléchard, of dairy company Fléchard de la Chapelle d’Andaine, were also respectively sentenced to suspended prison sentences of eight and five months and fined Euro 20,000 and Euro 37,500.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRITAIN’S recycling and waste sectors will be legally charged with helping the UK reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from 2013, should a new proposal from the European Commission become law. Under a tabled ‘effort sharing’ directive, economic sectors not included within the European Union’s (EU) current and future emissions trading regime, should also help fight global warming.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

SOMETHING must be in the water these days in Brussels. The European Commission seems determined to press ahead with its plans to reshape the European Union’s (EU) energy market, no matter how vociferous or powerful the opposition. In December, the Commission was bullish about unbundling, now it is being equally aggressive over renewable energy.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

RUSSIA and eastern European countries will be eager consumers of car rental and company fleet leasing services in the next few years but would-be players in these markets should know that a slew of administrative problems, supply delays and tax complications may await them.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WHILE most informed people now agree it is important that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced across the global economy, the question about which methods to choose for achieving this have generated far less consensus and nowhere is this truer than with the road transport sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EURO 3 million international research project is to create multi-processor micro-chips able to operate key in-car systems simultaneously, boosting their speed and efficiency. The European Union (EU) is funding Euro 2 million of the MERASA project, which includes Britain’s Rapita Systems Ltd; Honeywell in the Czech Republic; the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre; Augsburg University, Germany; and the Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse.…