Search Results for: Germany

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has approved a new fishing access deal with Madagascar, allowing Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese to catch tuna in its Indian Ocean waters until December 2006. The EU will pay Madagascar Euro 825,000 this year and next to compensate it for the loss of fish.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EARNINGS gap between men and women in the European Union (EU) is still too wide at 15%, the European Commission has noted, while making a series of recommendations on tackling the problem. Its latest report on ‘equality between men and women’ showed Britain has one of the most unequal pay differentials (in 2003), at 22%, way ahead of France at 12% and Italy’s 6%.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TECHNOLOGY enabling local authorities to issue targeted alerts about impending air pollution or other environmental problems will be presented to a global telecommunications summit this November. The UN meeting in Tunisia will learn of the European Union (EU)-funded Air Pollution Network for Early warning and on-line information Exchange (APNEE) project, which could also, its developers say, warn citizens about oncoming disasters, such as storms and tidal waves.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT’S fair to say that neither Bulgarian nor Romanian wine stands very high in wine-lovers’ affections at the moment. That wasn’t always so.

The wines were held in some esteem in the 80s, for instance, under the last years of communist rule, but standards have slipped pretty drastically in the score of years since then.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ITALY and Germany dominate design innovation in the European Union (EU) textile sector, according to the figures from the EU’s Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) – OHIM. They show that in 2003 and 2004, Italy formally registered 2,899 textile designs with the office, gaining them legal protection against plagiarism.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN and eight other European countries have signed a memorandum of understanding about constructing a groundbreaking X-ray research laser, so acute it could measure chemical reactions in real time. The UK, France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany have agreed to negotiate in detail an inter-governmental arrangement for building an approximately three-kilometre-long underground laser generator.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the takeover of Italian copper production holding company Generale Industrie Metallurgiche SpA (GIM), of Italy, by Milan-based finance house INTEK SpA, which is controlled by Quattroduedue Holding BV, of the Netherlands. GIM companies produce and distribute copper and copper alloy products, operating 18 production plants located in Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain and China.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) is warning that around 100 million people fall into poverty every year because of medical care payments they cannot afford. It adds that an additional 150 million people spend nearly half their incomes on medical expenses.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
GERMANY’S laws covering the deposit and return obligations for non-re-usable drinks packaging break European Union (EU) regulations because they discriminate against drinks importers, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has found. The case was brought by the European Commission following complaints by drinks producers outside Germany, in particular mineral water suppliers bottling at source, that the costs involved in transporting and refilling bottles was prohibitive.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SECURING agreement on important European Union (EU) legislation creating a continent-wide tolling system for all lorries exceeding 3.5 tonnes will be the top transport priority of the EU’s new Luxembourg presidency. The grand duchy’s transport minister Lucien Lux has already discussed the railway aspects of the proposed widened Eurovignette regime with the EU railway federation the CER and has publicly promised to push for agreement.…