Search Results for: Netherlands

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ITALY and Germany dominate design innovation in the European Union (EU) textile sector, according to the figures from the EU’s Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) – OHIM. They show that in 2003 and 2004, Italy formally registered 2,899 textile designs with the office, gaining them legal protection against plagiarism.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN and eight other European countries have signed a memorandum of understanding about constructing a groundbreaking X-ray research laser, so acute it could measure chemical reactions in real time. The UK, France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany have agreed to negotiate in detail an inter-governmental arrangement for building an approximately three-kilometre-long underground laser generator.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE PROMOTORS of a European Commission-supported research project encouraging municipalities across Europe to establish local broadband services say their four trials have proved a success. The scheme is especially designed to help local authorities seed new comms tech investment in zones deemed too remote by commercial service providers for investing in infrastructure.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WHILE discussions continue over how to ensure the security of energy supplies to the European Union (EU), Brussels institutions are sinking money into one sure bet, eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), for instance, is lending US$170 million to SOCAR, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, to fund two Caspian gas projects.…

KEITH NUTHALL
AS the European Union (EU)’s greenhouse gas trading scheme beds in this year, its environment ministers can push ahead with fighting pollution, in the knowledge that the EU should hit its Kyoto Protocol emissions targets. According to the European Commission, current and planned policies should enable the expanded EU to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 8% from their 1990 levels during 2008-2012.…

KEITH NUTHALL
On the basis of existing policies and measures alone, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Sweden and the United Kingdom should reach their individual targets. The Netherlands and Luxembourg will achieve their targets with the help of credits from the project-based mechanisms.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has fined three chemical companies Euro 216.91 million for operating a cartel in monochloroacetic acid production; it makes detergents and thickens cosmetics. The companies concerned included Akzo Nobel, of the Netherlands (Euro 84.38 million); Atofina – now Arkema – of France (Euro 58.5 million); and Hoechst, of Germany (Euro 74.03 million).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that European Union (EU) governments may not ban feed supplements that are lawfully manufactured in another EU country because they contain certain levels of vitamin D. Germany’s Denkavit Futtermittel GmbH had been fighting North Rhine-Westphalia restrictions on sales of its Netherlands-manufactured piglet feed.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
AUSTRALIA’S paint and coatings industry has been enjoying a period of stability and steady prosperity of late, as a mature sector that is generally growing at the same rate as the country’s robust economy. Despite suffering the effects of the general downturn in the Asian economy after SARS and terrorism fears, the industry has remained highly competitive throughout the five-year period to 2003-2004.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) advocate general Francis Jacobs has advised that where consumers buy excised goods, including tobacco and alcohol, in a foreign European Union (EU) country, and arrange for them to be transported to their home EU state, only the excise duty originally paid is due.…