Search Results for: Germany

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HEALTH ministers from seven European Union (EU) countries have announced a plan to boost research cooperation to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine. Meeting in Paris, ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands agreed to jointly organise studies and clinical trials to speed up discoveries, avoiding wasteful duplicate testing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SPANISH steel producer Acerinox is likely to lose a final appeal against European Union (EU) rulings that it took part in a cartel in Spain’s market for stainless steel. An advocate general of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has recommended that ECJ judges back the junior European Court of First Instance’s insistence that Acerinox took part in market fixing with Germany’s ThyssenKrupp and others.…

BY ALAN OSBORN and KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH off licences will be able to sell more bottle and can sizes for imported soft drinks and low alcohol beer under a European Commission proposal to allow European Union (EU) manufacturers to sell such drinks in all volumes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GLOBAL corruption watchdog Transparency International has confirmed Britain’s place as one of the world’s cleaner countries, ranking it 11th in its annual league table of government probity. In a report containing few surprises, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland and Singapore were lauded has having the most honest governments, while the graft-ridden administrations of Nigeria, Bangladesh and Haiti were bottom of the table.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU) research consortium has announced a breakthrough in cutting the weight of cars, by producing and testing a full-scale carbon fibre floorpan, sills, roof, pillars and side panels. The result, it claims are safe and fast cars, not only using smaller engines and so emitting less pollution than metal models, but would be popular and mass produced.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GERMAN timber industry is to receive a major slice of a Euro 300 million rural development package being developed by the Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank. The European Investment Bank (EIB) is planning to fund Euro 150 million of this programme, which cites timber production, as one of four priorities (including the food industry, village rehabilitation and general economic development).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HEALTH ministers from seven European Union (EU) countries have agreed to boost research cooperation to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine. Meeting in Paris, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands agreed to jointly organise studies and clinical trials to speed up discoveries, avoiding duplicate testing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A BRITISH company car VAT regulation deviating from standard EU has been extended until 2008 following a favourable European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling about a similar system in Germany. The rule involves Customs & Excise restricting to 50% the proportion of company hiring or leasing charges declared as business expenses on VAT returns, thereby reducing VAT bills.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has fined two haberdashery companies Euro 30 million each for operating a cartel from 1994-9. Britain’s Coats Holdings and Germany’s William Prym divided up Europe’s needle, pins and fasteners markets with the UK’s Entaco Group (for needles).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A STUDY into the European Union’s (EU) proposed REACH system has been roundly criticised by members of the European Parliament committee that ordered it. Consultants Arthur D. Little’s report claimed REACH could cause “a 2.9% loss in GDP and a 24.7% loss in (chemical and related industry) production”.…