Search Results for: Germany

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE RICHES that can be made from the illegal ivory trade are well known, but what of illicit imports and exports of rare flowers. Shipping protected orchids to Europe, Japan and north America can make criminals a lot of money.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed the creation of a central European Union aid fund commanding between Euro 500,000 and Euro 1 billion, which could be raided by Member States and eastern European countries wanting to join the EU that fall victim to natural disasters.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW laboratory tasked with fostering innovative solutions for nuclear waste management has been inaugurated at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

Its Institute for Transuranium Elements, in Karlsruhe, Germany, has opened a Euro 10 million Minor Actinide Laboratory, which will manufacture and characterize the most suitable materials for the transmutation of long-lived toxic elements created by the nuclear industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROSTAT has praised Europe’s food industry for performing well regarding productivity, with growth from 1990-2000 being above that for manufacturing at 2.1 per cent per annum. For meat production, the most efficient country was Denmark, dairy – Germany, and other food industries – Britain.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a new directive to cover takeover bids in the EU that will allow, among other things, a majority shareholder to require minority holders to sell him their securities while empowering minority shareholders to require the majority holder to buy them out.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE is storming ahead of the European Union’s league table for the export of electricity, supplying other EU Member States with 69,479 GWh in the latest year for which comparable figures are available (2000); Austria was the only other significant EU exporter, supplying 1,296 GWh, although outside the union, Norway recouped significant earnings from exporting 19,055 GWh.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE LEGAL formalities for creating the Single European Sky are approaching completion. The initial proposal from the European Commission for integrating the EU’s national air traffic control authorities into a continental ATC system has now been approved by the EU member governments and, in slightly amended form, by the European Parliament.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AFTER intensive consultation the European Commission has come up with a proposed new EU take-over directive that it hopes will avoid the fate of its predecessor, which was rejected by the European Parliament last year. The earlier text was strongly opposed by Germany, which feared it could weaken defences against hostile take-overs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ITALIAN leather manufacturer appears to have lost an international legal struggle to prevent a former German company from using a trade name similar to its own to market furniture upholstered with leather bought from alternative suppliers. In a test case at the European Court of Justice, Italian Leather, of Bironto, Italy, has failed to establish that a ruling that it secured at Bari District Court should overrule a decision made earlier at the Regional Court, Koblenz, Germany.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has made it clear that it will not countenance the creation of certain special tax regimes within the European Union for so-called coordination centres, that provide services including banking, marketing, insurance and logistics to companies within an international group.…