Search Results for: Latvia

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EVERY recession has a silver lining: inefficient competitors are unmasked and forced out of business; and governments usually spend freely to pump prime an ailing economy. And for major essential industries such as the power sector, economic slumps can be good times.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) heads of government have approved Euro 3.9 billion in EU spending on energy investment projects, after they finally finished wrangling over the detail of this keystone of their economic stimulus package.

As expected, the final programme has more projects in southern and eastern Europe than in previous drafts.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A SPECIAL Ecodesign Regulatory Committee has backed European Commission proposals to toughen mandatory energy performance requirements for televisions and ‘white goods’ – such as washing machines and dishwashers. This means some existing models will from mid-2010 be banned from European Union (EU) shops.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

FRENCH attempts to get the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers to sign up in principle to a farmer-friendly and potentially protectionist Common Agricultural Policy in the long-term have been blocked by Britain, Sweden and Latvia. France had spoken of "community preference": erecting fresh EU tariff barriers on food imports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

France’s attempts to get the EU Council of Ministers to sign up in principle to a farmer-friendly and potentially protectionist Common Agricultural Policy in the long-term were blocked by Britain, Sweden and Latvia at a meeting of EU agriculture ministers last Friday.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AS 2009 dawns, the European Union’s (EU) renewable energy sector knows that it has truly entered the mainstream of EU utility markets, its growth being sanctioned by ambitious legislation approved before Christmas.

After more than a year of debates, the European Parliament and EU ministers have approved a new EU directive imposing mandatory national targets for the 27 member states regarding the portion of their gross final consumption of energy in 2020 coming from renewable sources.…

BY MONIKA HANLEY

LATVIA’S textile and clothing industry is being hit hard in the recent reversal of the country’s economic fortunes, as competitors in the labour-intensive industry either close down or move production to cheaper locations.

In the first 10 months of 2008, the output of Latvian textile and clothing companies declined by approximately 7%-10%, most of it in the last few months, said the Latvian Association of Textile and Clothing Industry.…

BY MARK ROWE

ONE of the major elements of the 2004 enlargement of the European Union (EU) was its intended expansion to these new member states of the Schengen agreement, which phases out checks at shared borders and allows free movement for all within the EU.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE LITHUANIAN government has welcomed the backing by European Union (EU) heads of government at a summit in Brussels to connect the electricity grids of all the EU countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, to strengthen their energy security.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

HEADS of government at the European Union (EU) summit staged last week have backed a European Commission action plan to connect the electricity grids of all the EU countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, to strengthen their energy security.…