Search Results for: Germany

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH architects are among the most lightly regulated in the European Union (EU), with their Danish, Irish, Dutch and Swedish colleagues enjoying a similarly light regulatory burden, according to a European Commission-funded survey, promoting liberalisation in Europe’s professions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank has drawn up plans to lend Germany’s E.ON Energie Euro 300 million to fund a 2-year investment programme aiming at promoting energy efficiency within its electricity production and distribution facilities. An EIB note said that the money would fund “state-of-the-art energy management in electricity production including renewables,” adding that the money would be focused on research and development.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is investigating state aid of Euro 1 million paid by the German government to stationary giant Herlitz, to prevent a subsidiary – Falken Office Products – from going insolvent. Brussels fears this payment may have broken European Union state aid rules.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s competition directorate-general has decided to close its probe into the alleged refusal by Dutch gas company Gasunie to grant access to its pipeline network to the Norwegian subsidiary of US oil and gas producer Marathon in the 1990’s.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
COMPARED with the years of tortuous wrangling that slowed the adoption of the first – and legally abortive – European Union (EU) tobacco advertising directive, the EU Council of Ministers has speedily approved its replacement.

The council has accepted amendments tabled by the European Parliament and approved the legislation on its first reading, with Germany and Britain voting against.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s anti-fraud office OLAF has been called in to investigate financial corruption at the EU’s Committee of the Regions, the Brussels body representing local governments across Europe.

Its investigators are checking allegations made by Dutch socialist MEP Michiel van Hulten to the European Parliament that the record of financial probity at the CoR “can only be described as alarming.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has drawn up plans to lend US$6 million to an Azerbaijan company, which is to apply coatings to the Middle East country’s growing oil and gas pipeline network.

Baku-based EUPEC PipeCoatings Azerbaijan will receive this revolving loan facility; it is an Azeri-German joint venture between EUPEC PipeCoatings GmbH, of Germany, and Azertrans Ltd and Azinvest, of Azerbaijan.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has drawn up plans to finance renewable energy projects in Germany, marking a change in mood towards supporting such green schemes. Up to Euro 200 million would be invested, mainly in wind power plants, and to a lesser extent geothermal, small-scale hydro power, solar energy and biomass based energy projects.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON, ALAN OSBORN, PHILIP FINE and KEITH NUTHALL

IF there had been feelings bubbling under the surface of the British civil nuclear industry that the regulations governing its security were due for an overhaul, the events of September 11, 2001 – becoming universally known by its American shorthand 9/11 – certainly brought everybody to the table.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FINNISH lawyers are the most lightly regulated in the European Union (EU), according to the surprising results of a European Commission-funded survey designed to promote the need for liberalisation in Europe’s liberal professions. Oddly, Greece, not known for its adherence to EU rules, has the union’s most heavily regulated legal profession; under a statistical indices developed by the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Greece has a regulation burden of 9.5, while the laissez-faire Finns score a tiny 0.3.…