Search Results for: Netherlands

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has ordered the Dutch government recover maritime transport aid it has paid out since 1996 to port and inland waterway towage operations, ruling that these payments broke EU state aid rules. Brussels approved subsidies from the Netherlands to towage operators, but had assumed that this money was for limited to ships working on the open seas.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MINISTERS of the 15 European Union countries have reached agreement on the Trans-European Energy Networks directive. The ministers have essentially supported the Commission proposal of last year and Brussels officials predicted that the European Parliament will do likewise later this year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TOUGH restrictions applied by the Austrian and Swedish governments on the use of cadmium in their territories are likely to be scrapped, after the European Court of Justice ruled that amendments to EU legislation permitting them to retain these rules were actually illegal.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AN INTERNATIONAL team of scientists based at Galway, in Ireland, has made a surprising discovery that could have significant consequences for future climate change.

The EU-sponsored Parforce research project, led by the National University of Ireland, has found that iodine vapours released by marine algae can help thicken haze and cloud layers, blocking sunlight and thereby partially offsetting global warming from greenhouse gases.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL initiative to cleanse the polluted Barents Sea of nuclear waste has been launched, with Euro 110 million being pledged by Russia, the European Commission, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The Barents clean-up will be the first priority project of this Support Fund of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership; the sea, to the north of Russia and Norway, is commonly known as the largest repository of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste in the world.…

BY MARK ROWE
CYCLISTS involved in a road accidents will automatically be deemed to be the wronged party, under planned road safety changes to European Union insurance legislation. A directive from Brussels has ruled that cyclists and pedestrians who are hit by a car will always be covered by the insurance of the motor vehicle involved, irrespective of whether or not they are to blame.…

BY MARK ROWE
PEDESTRIANS and cyclists involved in an accident with a car would be covered by the insurance of the vehicle, even if they caused the incident, if proposed amendments to European law are agreed. Changes tabled to the EU’s Fifth Motor Insurance Directive by Erkki Liikanen, EU Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society – will go before European Parliament for first reading this autumn.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE DECLINE in the European Union’s use and production of coal over the past 50 years has been documented in a detailed paper by EU statistical agency Eurostat to mark the end of the European Coal and Steel Community.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has ruled that by allowing hemp fibre crops to be harvested before its seeds are fully mature, (enabling the them to produce cannabis), the Netherlands government broke European Union subsidy rules, which are strict on the age of hemp that attracts Brussels subsidies.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE EUROPEAN Union has given itself until the end of this month (May) to make a crunch decision over whether to further subsidise the future insurance of the continent’s airlines in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, in New York last September.…