Search Results for: Germany

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE FLOODS in central Europe last August and September took a tragic toll of lives, disrupted local economies and devastated numerous museums with the irretrievable loss of cultural artefacts. In Dresden, the worst hit city, thousands of artworks had to be moved when both the Zwinger Palace, site of one of Europe’s great art museums, and the Albertinum Museum became victims of rising floodwater.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Europe’s ambitious Galileo programme to establish a global satellite navigation system is clearly a project that likes to keep its supporters in a state of fairly constant nervous tension. At a cost of 3.2 billion euros, Galileo was never a sure-fire runner to begin with.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WATER privatisation has certainly had its critics, but it has a new supporter in the shape of the European Commission. It has publicly backed the growing privatisation of Europe’s water utilities, with its internal market commissioner praising British government moves to inject competition into its national sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has infuriated the European Commission by unanimously authorising the Greek government to pay Euro 90 million in additional state aid to its cotton producers in 2001-2. Sweden, Denmark and Germany abstained on the vote by the EU agriculture council.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT’S now official. Following agreement this week by its environment ministers, the European Union (EU) is to set up a market to trade pollution permits for carbon dioxide (CO2), the main so-called greenhouse gas, starting in 2005.

The European Commission is delighted, business is pleased, and while not all environmentalists are overjoyed, the balance of opinion among them is clearly favourable.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the acquisition by Germany’s mining and technology group RAG of German speciality chemicals company Degussa AG, so long as RAG sells its Italian, Spanish and German plants making naphtalene sulfonate, an important concrete input.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MALE-MENOPAUSE ridden men buying powerful motorcycles that they cannot ride properly is one of two reasons for a levelling off in a 10-year decline in road accidents in rich countries, an OECD report claims. The other problem is an increase in illicit drug use by drivers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is considering a range of requests from foreign governments to liberalise the access to its legal professions under commitments it will make in a future World Trade Organisation (WTO) deal, following the ongoing so-called Doha Development Round.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a formal investigation into whether Germany’s spirits monopoly law regarding the production of grain brandy, (Kornbranntwein), involves the payment of illegal state subsidies. The Commission wants to prevent small agricultural producers being unfairly favoured with state production subsidies denied to producers from other Member States, and, from 2006, to larger German commercial producers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have formally approved the creation of an EU Solidarity Fund, helping Member States deal quickly with the effects of natural and man-made disasters; its funds will be mobilised immediately to assist regions affected by the floods of August and September 2002, which should help reduce the burden that has to be met by insurance companies.…