Search Results for: Netherlands

Keith Nuthall
POLITICAL pressure is being piled onto European Union (EU) member states to release more information about the way they spend EU-funded grants and subsidies from the Euro 110 billion EU budget. In a long-awaited ‘European Transparency Initiative’, EU anti-fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas has proposed discussions with national governments about “the introduction of a legal obligation to publish information about projects and end beneficiaries of funds under shared management”, between member states and Brussels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CONCERNS about delays in the implementation of a major piece of European Union (EU) environmental legislation have sparked a review by the European Commission, and will encourage it to pursue legal action in the courts. The law in question is the 1996 integrated pollution prevention and control directive, which insists large EU industrial and agricultural installations obtain operating permits – issued only if the best available techniques on controlling emissions are in use.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LITTER collection and refuse disposal can pose environmental health hazards, so surely cities and towns would be cleaner if waste was sucked underground by a futuristic sucking mechanism. Sounds like the 22nd century, but actually, Swedish firm Envac Centralsug is already offering such a service.…

BY MARK ROWE
IN times of conflict, cultural property, such as archaeological sites, works of art, museums and monuments, can also suffer grievously at the hands of opposing military and guerrilla forces. In recognition of this, such objects are accorded protection by the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GENERAL Motors BV (formerly General Motors Nederland BV) and Opel Nederland BV, of the Netherlands, look set to lose a second appeal against being fined over preventing their dealers exporting to other European Union (EU) member countries. This was found by the European Commission a breach of EU freedom of trade laws, and sparked a Euro 43 million fine to the companies.…

BY MARK ROWE
EACH day eight million disposable nappies are used in the UK, adding up to 2.5 billion every year. A single disposable nappy in landfill takes 500 years to decompose and, as a result, the industry in recycling disposable nappies is taking off.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

COSMETICS and soap trademark holders must be able to prove they are acting on firm knowledge when insisting a consignment of their products owned by a third party be blocked over concerns that they are counterfeit, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
BRITAIN employs more psychiatric nurses on a per capital basis than other major EU countries according to the 2005 world mental health atlas compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO). This shows the UK had 104 psychiatric nurses per 100,000 of population compared to 99 in the Netherlands, 98 in France and only 52 in Germany.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ROLE of the Caribbean as a staging point for ill-gotten gains goes back to the trans-Atlantic misadventures of the first European ships over 400 years ago. It would appear some habits die hard. Wesley Gibbings reports from Port of Spain, Trinidad.…

Keith Nuthall
A HEALTHY-DOSE of Nordic culture has been prescribed by the world’ premier anti-corruption organisation Transparency International, which has again hailed northern Europe as the region most free of graft, bribes and kickbacks. Such financial crime is rarest in Iceland, says the 2005 corruption rankings from the German group, with Finland and New Zealand tying at second place, Denmark, fourth, Sweden sixth, and Norway eighth.…