Search Results for: Latvia

It has taken more than half a decade for the cosmetics markets of eastern Europe to finally shrug off a long-running period stagnation that has characterised the regional market. Two underlying features – the financial crisis of 2008 and the completion of multinational takeovers in the noughties that saturated these post-communist markets – lay behind the extended period of slow, low or non-existent growth.…

OPPOSITION is growing within eastern and central Europe to the plan to expand the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to Germany. Gazprom, E.ON, BASF/Wintershall, OMV, ENGIE and Royal Dutch Shell have formed a consortium that would double the capacity of the current Nord Stream 1 and 2 line to 55 billion additional cubic metres of gas a year (bcm/y).…

THE EUROPEAN Parliament has given its political support for strong action by the European Commission in the coming year to propose and implement concrete actions to create an ambitious Energy Union. Its goal is to freely trading power between the European Union’s (EU) 28 member states.…

GAZPROM has agreed to drop gas prices charged to Lithuanian utility Lietuvos Dujos until the end of 2015 following European Commission charges of dominant position abuses in central and eastern European gas markets. The Russian giant is also now facing competition for cheaper liquid natural gas (LNG) supplies in Lithuania via the Klaipėda terminal on the Baltic Sea.…

BRUSSELS DETAILS UPCOMING EU VAT REFORMS

THE EUROPEAN Commission has released a statement outlining the subject of planned VAT legislative proposals to be made next year (2016). These will reduce the administrative burden on businesses through VAT regimes varying between European Union (EU) member states.…

GAZPROM has declared that it will fight the European Commission inquiry into possible dominant position abuses, even though the Russian position could be weak. The European Commission sent Gazprom a ‘Statement of Objections’ on April 22, accusing the Russian energy giant of abusing its dominant position in central and eastern European gas markets, a charge the company denies.…

THE POLISH, Scottish, Austrian and Belgian meat sectors are significant winners in the latest announcement of European Union (EU) marketing financing designed to help food companies seize more sales within and outside the EU.
They will benefit from multi-million Euro sales and marketing programmes, 50% funded by the EU, announced yesterday (Tues April 21).…

A MEETING of European Union (EU) health ministers in Riga this week has backed the development of a new policy for reducing alcohol-related harm. Ministers, meeting informally in the capital of current EU president Latvia on April 20 to 21, also agreed that the EU should play a role in creating general alcohol standards for the international market and in the harmonisation of EU national alcohol policies.…

EUROPEAN cigarette smuggling has evolved and diversified over the past ten years, and international cooperation is often the best way to counter them, argue European Union (EU) anti-fraud officials. Meanwhile, the tobacco industry has accepted that liaising with these initiatives does bring benefits.…

The UK is lagging behind many other European Union (EU) member states when it comes to energy efficiency and is fiddling the figures to show it is making better progress than in reality, according to the latest report from the Brussels-based Coalition for Energy Savings.…