Search Results for: Germany

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE NUMBER of people worldwide at risk from devastating floods will double from one billion today to two billion by 2050 without greater efforts to prevention and predict such disasters, United Nations University (UNU) specialists have claimed. In a first detailed policy statement from a new UNU environment and human security institute in Bonn, Germany, they point out floods currently annually inflict “up to 25,000 annual deaths, extensive homelessness, disaster-induced disease, crop and livestock damage and other serious harm” on over 520 million people.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GERMANY’S Federal Cartel Office has been asked by the European Commission to examine a planned take over by the country’s dominant broadband cable operator KDG of smaller rival ish (CORRECT SPELLING AND CASE). As the owner of Deutsche Telekom’s former broadband cable network, KDG runs high-speed Internet services across Germany, except in the Länder of Hesse, Baden-Wurttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia, where ish is the dominant broadband operator.…

BY MARK ROWE
During the time of the Soviet Union, museums in the satellite states of Eastern Europe routinely kept short working hours, closed without notice and were all too frequently dowdy, musty and inaccessible.

With the accession of 10 new states (including eight in eastern Europe), into the European Union, the future for museums from Lithuania to Malta, and from Slovenia to Slovakia is much brighter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GREEKS may be European football champions, but they are bottom of the league for tax honesty, said a European Commission report, with more than 20% of work by value being undeclared. ‘Undeclared work in an enlarged Union’ shows Britain is much more honest, with only 2% of its GDP concealed from the tax authorities, second only to Austria (1.5%).…

Keith Nuthall
THE GREEKS may be champions in European football, but they are bottom of the league for tax honesty, a European Commission report has concluded, with more than 20% of work by value being undeclared. The paper ‘Undeclared work in an enlarged Union’ shows that Britain is much more honest, with only 2% of its GDP being concealed from the tax authorities, second only to Austria (1.5%).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IT is early days, but the European Union’s (EU) Solidarity Fund, subsidising the costs of large-scale disasters, shows every likelihood of being a permanent feature of the EU risk management scene. We’re not talking small beer here; the fund paid out Euro 104.7 million last year and Euro 728 million the year before that, easing the consequences of disasters such as floods, earthquakes and forest fires.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE HOTEL industry is Europe’s second largest source of tax evasion linked to undeclared work, a European Commission report has claimed. Only the construction industry is shier of tax collectors, (except in Germany, where – oddly – farmers and gardeners are even worse).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TELECOMMUNICATIONS investment is being attracted to European countries with the least state involvement in dominant operators, according to a survey from the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA). It says that Britain, Denmark and Ireland are the most popular countries for telecoms investors, with Belgium, France, and Germany the least, (other countries surveyed were Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden).…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union needs to set firm long term targets for 2020 regarding the development of renewable energy, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and “give energy markets long-term investment security”, the head of the European Environment Agency (EEA) has said.…

BY MARK ROWE
GIVEN the level of public concern over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in what we drink and eat, most companies have chosen to tread warily around the issue and sought not to draw attention to it. In the Swedish town of Ystad, however, a small family brewery has adopted the opposite approach.…