Search Results for: Greece

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN has been given a relatively clean bill of health in the latest Transparency International corruption rankings, being viewed as joint-11th least-corrupt country in the world, sharing its billing with Canada and Luxembourg. Finland was the most honest place in which to do business said the pressure group’s survey, followed by Iceland and the Denmark plus New Zealand at joint third.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FUTURE sale of Greece’s Olympic Airlines is being threatened by a formal state aid investigation launched this week (Wed 17-3) by the European Commission, which has stressed its determination that the privatisation of the airline should go ahead without any illegal state aid being paid by the Greek government.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AMONGST all European Union (EU) countries, Finland has the highest number of nurses and midwives per head of population, – 2,181 per 100,000 inhabitants – according to the recently released and latest available comparative figures. EU statistical agency Eurostat said that these 1998-2000 figures showed Portugal as having the least nurses and midwives (379 per 100,000) and Greece the second worst performer (391).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GREECE is being threatened with legal action by the European Commission over its failure to abide by European Union (EU) rules insisting on international open tendering for its schoolbook production. The Commission has warned Greece of European Court of Justice action for allowing the national Organisation for the Publication of Schoolbooks to order supplies from between 80-90 Athens-area publishers and printers every year, without launching a tender.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BELGIUM is the EU salmonellosis hotspot says the latest comparative figures from Eurostat. In 2001, 104 cases were recorded in Belgium per 100,000 people, compared with Britain’s 29 cases and an EU average of 40.6. Greece had fewest infections (2.9/100,000).…

Keith Nuthall
INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund (IMF) policies towards borrower countries will henceforth be influenced by their capacity to implement Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations on fighting money laundering. IMF directors have agreed these assessments “do not contravene the prohibition of the Fund to exercise law enforcement powers”.…

BY MARK ROWE
MENTION Albania and money, and the image that comes to mind is of the extraordinary pyramid schemes that gripped the country in the mid-1990s as the country stepped out into a post-Stalinist dawn. Albanians poured their assets into the schemes, with an enthusiasm that was as remarkable as it was misguided.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THEY’RE not to everybody’s taste, we quite agree, but there’s no doubt that flavoured cigars have a very devoted band of followers and can no longer be dismissed as a passing fancy. Indeed after speaking to a number of the big players it is easy to gain the impression that the flavoured, (or aromatic), segment has (along perhaps with filters) been the only one to buck the cigar sector’s trend of falling or stagnant sales in recent years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament agriculture committee has called for European Union (EU) member governments to have the freedom to link up to 70 per cent of tobacco growing subsidies to production, which would demolish the European Commission’s plans to phase out these supports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
REVISIONS to a European nuclear energy liability convention will increase the total accident compensation available from operators in 15 countries to Euro 1.5 billion, up from Euro 350 million. Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Turkey have now signed the Protocols to amend the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy and the Brussels Convention Supplementary to the Paris Convention.…