Search Results for: Italian

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE NEW European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has now virtually completed its legislative journey through the EU institutions and is set to begin operations in the first half of next year though we’re still not sure where. Helsinki was the favourite for the seat until the Italian prime minister signor Berlusconi rudely pushed the claims of Parma, dismissing the Finns as “people who don’t know what prosciutto is.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNET legal advice service, providing information about European Union legislation affecting e-commerce, has been launched. The site, eLexPortal.com, will provide updated information on EU and national laws and regulations on the subject; it is free of charge, and allows users to e-mail queries to its online experts.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ITALIAN state aid scheme designed to help the European Union achieve one of its key post-Erika disaster objectives – the phasing out of old single hull oil tankers – could be blocked by the European Commission, on the grounds that it is too generous.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Parliament this week (on December 11th) cleared the way for a European Food Safety Authority early next year with powers to set and monitor safety standards for the entire food chain “from farm to fork.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation has launched a general round at its summit in Qatar, which will include negotiations on liberalising export and import regimes for so-called industrial goods such as fish.

These talks have a final deadline of 2005 and, said the meeting’s communiqué, will try “to reduce or as appropriate eliminate tariffs, including the reduction or elimination of tariff peaks, high tariffs, and tariff escalation, as well as non-tariff barriers, in particular on products of export interest to developing countries.”…

Keith Nuthall
FISCAL concessions developed to encourage unregistered gray market Italian businesses declare themselves officially and start paying tax have been approved by the European Commission as fair way in which to boost the regularisation of the Italy’s economy.

Rome has offered businesses in the country’s underground economy a range of discounts in tax and social security to persuade them to establish themselves legitimately.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched an investigation into state aid paid by the Italian government to its shellfish producers; it fears they were overcompensated for problems caused by the spread of mucilage in the Adriatic last year.

Rome paid fish farmers Euro 775,000 to cover up to 30 per cent of their losses caused by this natural jelly hindering their operations.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
MARIO Levi SPA and Ambra Leather, two Italian automotive leather companies, have opened a Rand 39 million, (US$4 million), leather plant in Uitenhage, South Africa. The re-tanning and finishing joint venture produces leather primarily for export to Italian auto-maker Alfa Romeo, although negotiations are under way to strike supply deals with local manufacturers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the takeover of Filtrauto S.A., the French manufacturer of automotive filters, by its Italian rival Sogefi S.p.a. Brussels cleared the deal on competition grounds, because the merged company will still have to fight for sales, facing opposition particularly from German manufacturers Mann & Hummel and Mahle.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
OFF-LICENCES cannot rely on EU consumer protection laws when trying to protect themselves against unfair contracts imposed by suppliers, the European Court of Justice has ruled. The case centred on the supply of automatic drinks dispensers from a company called Idealservice to two Italian companies, which later objected to a clause in the operational contract.…