Search Results for: Ireland

BY ALAN OSBORN
ACCORDING to global consumption figures, Israel is the world capital of teenage soft drink demand, with hot weather combined with a competitive market to create something of a utopia for drinks companies. An international survey of soft drinks consumption published by the Economist by 15 year olds of both sexes suggests that Israel has the world’s biggest teenage consumers of carbonated and still drinks, colas, sodas, juices and the like on a per capita basis.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has called on the European Commission to frame an action plan on simplifying red tape for the fishing industry, “reducing their bureaucratic workload and the restrictions that bear down on fishermen”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) anti-fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas has called on other cigarette manufacturers to make smuggling crackdown agreements with the EU and its member states, mirroring that already struck with Philip Morris International. Speaking at the opening of a European Parliament exhibition on cigarette smuggling, Kallas said he hoped the agreement would “serve as a model for other manufacturers who are willing to commit the necessary resources to combat illegal trade of their products and to work with us to combat that trade”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) is planning to make large low interest loans to two British utilities, to fund major capital works schemes. In Northern Ireland, the publicly-owned European Union (EU) bank wants to lend the province’s Water Service up to GBPounds 88 million to help improve the quality, quantity and security of its treated water supplies to 781,000 customers, ensuring compliance with the EU drinking water directive.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) has censured the Irish government for committing what it calls “general and persistent breaches of the (European Union) waste directive”. Judges said Dublin’s failure to introduce an effective permit system for waste handlers had sparked uncontrolled dumping, to which it sometimes turned a blind eye.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE IRISH government is being taken to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over its failure to order environmental impact assessments of pig rearing units before they are set up. The result of this, said the European Commission, which has launched the action is that “the public and the environment may suffer nuisance and harm”.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commissioner charged with forging high cross-border standards in financial reporting has likened published accounts to “bikinis: much more interesting for what they conceal than for what they reveal -regardless of more exacting accounting standards”.

Ireland’s European Union (EU) internal market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy told a Chartered Institute of Management Accountants’ qualification conferring ceremony in Dublin, accountants should better rely on commercial horse sense.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice’s (ECJ) Court of First Instance has rejected a bid by Spain’s Duarte y Beltrán SA to secure European Union (EU)-wide trademark rights to sell cosmetics, soaps and perfumes under the brand ‘INTEA’. Judges backed the EU’s Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trademarks and Designs) -OHIM – in supporting the complaint of Italian rival Mirato SpA.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament and the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers have compromised on the final shape of a directive reducing sulphur content in marine fuels. The result is legislation that permits higher sulphur usage than the parliament wanted, cutting its marine fuels content to 1.5% by 2007, for all vessels in the Baltic, the North Sea, and the English Channel, and passenger ships in all EU seas and oceans.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has accused nine European Union (EU) governments of dragging their feet over promoting biofuels in their countries. It has sent critical formal notices to Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland and Slovenia accusing them of failing to submit national reports framing 2005 targets for biofuel consumption, as required under the Biofuels Directive.…