Search Results for: Germany

KEITH NUTHALL
A CONSORTIUM of key European Union players in the solar energy market has launched an ambitious scheme to install 15 million square meters of solar collectors in Europe by 2004, a project for which it hopes to get support from the European Commission.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN Union government ministers have agreed that from July 2002 a ban on the feeding of restaurant food waste to pigs will apply throughout the 15 EU countries, as part of a directive on the control of classical swine fever.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SIMPLICITY is not one the virtues that is readily associated with the institutions of the European Union, so it is refreshing to note that the European Parliament has recently taken a straightforward step to boost its accountability to the citizens of the continent that it serves.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a formal state aid investigation into payments from the German government of Euro 7.83 million, which were paid to bankrupt Saxony textile company Erba Lautex GmbH and its successor Neue Erba Lautex GmbH.

Brussels is also taking Germany to the European Court of Justice, alleging that it ignored a previous order, banning the payment of Euro 61.36 million to Erba Lautex.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is considering its legal options, after the dismissal of its case brought in New York against Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, alleging that they had helped promote tobacco smuggling within the EU.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas G.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a series of legal proceedings against EU Member States, which it claims have broken oil-related directives.

It has decided to take Italy to the European Court of Justice over its special tax on engine lubrication oils, which Brussels claims contravenes EU excise duty laws.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is threatening six EU Member States with legal action at the European Court of Justice for failing to implement a directive harmonising the imposition of road charges for heavy goods vehicles.

It has ordered Belgium, Germany, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Portugal to explain within two months how they intend to incorporate the European rules in their own legislation, or maybe face a case at the ECJ, which can order compliance and levy huge fines on governments refusing to obey.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE GERMAN government has been told that it must cut back its regional aid for the construction of a new Volkswagen car factory in Dresden to 85 per cent of the sum proposed. The revised aid of 145 million Deutschmarks, (about Pounds 47 million), is part of a total investment of DM 1,000 million for a so-called “transparent factory,” which would allow a customer to observe the final assembly of his vehicle on site.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has sent second warning letters to the UK and seven other EU countries for their failure to adopt an EU directive aimed at providing new car buyers with information about fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has called for the closure of EU coalmines that perform poorly economically, where they have been lavished with state aid paid with the view to them being restructured and turned around.

In its latest report on state aid to the mining industry, (for the year 2000), Brussels adopts an aggressively negative tone about aid paid by national governments to the coal industry, which it claims “is in crisis, despite several years of state aid.”…