Search Results for: International law

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A LARGE step has been made by the European Commission towards guaranteeing non-European Union lawyers and law firms the right to establish themselves in any EU Member State, with this principle, (hedged by some exemptions), being offered at the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round.…

Keith Nuthall
UNILATERAL action by the Belgian government to ban night-time landing and take-offs of outdated aircraft using hush-kit mufflers is being challenged by the European Commission. It says that Belgium should impose noise restrictions on aircraft in a way that is harmonised with the rest of the EU, under a new air noise directive, in force from July 1.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Free Trade Area (EFTA) Surveillance Authority is threatening Iceland with legal action over its alleged failure to implement European Economic Area rules on the sale and production of farmed fish. It has given Reykjavik two months in which to explain how it will write directive 91/67/EEC, as amended in 1993, 1995 and 1998, into its national statutes.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE UNITED States senate is examining a new air cargo bill that would impact upon British security companies and professionals working in the shipping and airline industries. The senate’s committee on commerce, science, and transportation has approved and moved an Air Cargo Security Act aimed to strengthen security on flights into the US, notably on the busy trans-Atlantic run.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is pushing for an acceleration of the phasing out of single hull tankers worldwide in the wake of the Prestige accident, where thousands of tonnes of crude oil spilled onto the pristine cost of Galicia, Spain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GLOBAL trade is being hampered by uncertainty amongst large companies over which national courts might hear a case regarding a contested contract, according to a International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) survey.

The world business group found that 40 per cent of 100 – unnamed – companies said that they had been “dissuaded from going ahead with international contracts” because of such concerns.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE AMERICAN Bar Association is pushing US state governments to pass laws protecting the position of lawyers to handle legal work in their jurisdictions, forcing competing professions to drop paralegal services. On Friday (March 28), an ABA task force released a proposed definition on the practice of law that should only be carried out by certified lawyers, which it would like codified and incorporated into states’ regulations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is pushing for an acceleration of the phasing out of single hull tankers worldwide in the wake of the Prestige accident. Indeed, in an unusual move, all of its 15 Member States have simultaneously proposed amendments to the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) MARPOL Convention, which would hasten their scrapping and replacement with safer double hull vessels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GROUNDBREAKING legal watchdog, charged with ensuring governments abide by a new international convention on environmental decision-making and information dissemination, has had its first meeting. This Compliance Committee of the recently strengthened Aarhus Convention will, from October, have the right to consider complaints from individual citizens and non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) that their governments are not complying with its terms.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking the unusual step of taking the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers to court to try and force it to toughen moves to criminalise environmental offences across the EU.

Ministers in January adopted an EU Decision – without referring to other European institutions – that calls on Member States to criminalise wilful and negligent pollution, but leaves flexibility on what kind of offence is made a crime and on how it should be punished.…