Search Results for: Greece

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE is flirting with potentially huge daily recurring fines from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) by failing to implement three ECJ rulings, one on some of the European Union’s (EU) oldest water legislation. Paris, claims the European Commission, has failed to adopt pollution reduction programmes required by the 1976 directive on discharges of dangerous substances to water, such as heavy metals, pesticides and chemicals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NATIONAL work accident statistics are keenly examined by occupational health practitioners, but they do not enable the safety of British workplaces to be compared against other European countries; that is where Eurostat, the European Union’s (EU) statistical agency comes in.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has undermined moves by Austria and Greece to block sales of GM maize and oilseed rape (respectively) which possess prior European Union (EU) market approval. EFSA concluded the countries have “no new scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human health and the environment”.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE WORLD is a small place when it comes to business these days. Increasingly, multi-nationals, as well as medium-sized companies are setting up shop in all four corners of the world. Outsourcing work and creating offices in developing countries is de rigueur to cut costs.…

BY MARK ROWE
During the time of the Soviet Union, museums in the satellite states of Eastern Europe routinely kept short working hours, closed without notice and were all too frequently dowdy, musty and inaccessible.

With the accession of 10 new states (including eight in eastern Europe), into the European Union, the future for museums from Lithuania to Malta, and from Slovenia to Slovakia is much brighter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GREEK government has been censured by the European Court of Justice for not properly installing an urban waste water collecting system for the Thriasio Pedio area, near Athens. The court found in this way and by subjecting this water to mere secondary treatment before it is discharged into the neighbouring and environmentally sensitive Gulf of Elefsina, Greece has broken the 1991 urban waste-water treatment directive.…

Keith Nuthall
THE GREEKS may be champions in European football, but they are bottom of the league for tax honesty, a European Commission report has concluded, with more than 20% of work by value being undeclared. The paper ‘Undeclared work in an enlarged Union’ shows that Britain is much more honest, with only 2% of its GDP being concealed from the tax authorities, second only to Austria (1.5%).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has given Greece a ‘reasoned opinion’ final warning threatening legal action at the European Court of Justice, telling it to abolish exclusive rights enjoyed by its state-owned Public Power Corporation (PCC) regarding lignite mining, which accounts for more than 60 per cent of Greek electricity generation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio has visited Syria, pressing its government to reform its gas infrastructure and regulation so it can play a key role in creating a Middle East-to-Europe network. The European Commission sees Syria as a key link, notably in the so-called Arab pipeline, linking Egypt to Syria and the Lebanon through Jordan.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EVERYONE knows commercial fraud costs business millions and millions of dollars and euros, but no one really knows how much. The United Nations is going to investigate, following a successful international seminar staged in Vienna. Keith Nuthall reports.…