Search Results for: Greece

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers are debating an urgent rescue package for a European fishing sector that is being buffeted by high fuel prices. European Commission officials are drafting formal proposals, which would suspend certain European Fisheries Fund subsidy controls for two years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

REFORMS to the European Union’s (EU) cotton subsidy system have been approved two years after previous changes were outlawed by the European Court of Justice. It ruled these 2004 reforms had been flawed through a lack of impact assessments and consultation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE PLANNED acquisition by British American Tobacco (BAT) of certain roll-you-own tobacco and snus sections of Denmark’s Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni (STK) has been approved by the European Commission. To secure this agreement, BAT had to promise selling-off certain brands in Norway (notably Petterøe’s and Tiedemanns Rød), where the expanded company would have had a dominant position.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

FOREIGN European Union (EU) drivers in an accident in Greece are insufficiently protected by Greek insurance laws, the European Commission has concluded. It is taking Greece to the European Court of Justice, to force it to enact the EU’s fifth motor insurance directive which guarantees policy holder rights and improves the protection of accident victims.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WITH Dmitry Medvedev becoming Russia’s new president, the European Union (EU) has been pushing ahead to secure oil and gas supplies independent of Moscow. EU energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and external relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner met with Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey diplomats and officials to discuss gas pipeline links.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE NUMBER of counterfeit cigarettes seized at the external borders of the European Union (EU) fell 63% in 2007 compared to the previous year, the European Commission has concluded. Brussels said 27.1 million packets worth (20 stick equivalent) of counterfeit cigarettes were seized.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) are planning to help build motorways in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Greece. The EIB plans to lend up to Euro 200 million for a new Korinthos-Patras-Tsakona Peloponnesian motorway.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament is pressing for an effective re-nationalisation of European Union (EU) powers to support the continued existence of an EU cotton production industry. In non-binding amendments to a proposed EU subsidy system largely disconnected from cotton production levels, MEPs called for national funds earmarked for wide-ranging actions protecting the EU industry, largely in Greece and Spain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has extended the financing of the Community Tobacco Fund to the end of 2009, ordering that it receive 5% of tobacco production aid this year and next. Ministers praised the scheme in a communiqué, stressing its use for "financing campaigns against tobacco consumption as well as measures to promote a switch of production," and adding: "It is considered as a successful example of synergy between agriculture and health policies."…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

UNHEALTHILY high concentrations of ground-level ozone in Europe were lower during summer 2007 than since 1997, claims the European Environment Agency (EEA). While not predicting whether this is a long term trend the agency stressed that Britain did not suffer any concentrations of the traffic-related pollutant exceeding European Union (EU)-advised maximums.…